[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
[November 10, 1999]
[Pages 2043-2049]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to Harley-Davidson Employees in York
November 10, 1999

    Thank you very much. Thank you. It's nice to be in a restrained, 
laid-back crowd like this. [Laughter] The truth is, it's wonderful to be 
in a place where people are happy, and they're not ashamed to be 
excited, and they're proud to go to work every day. Thank you very much 
for making me feel welcome here today.
    Thank you, Jeff Bleustein; thank you, 
Bobby Ramsey. Old Bobby kind of hurt my 
feelings. You know, I went up to him and he said, ``Well,

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you're not nearly as tall as I thought you were.'' [Laughter] He said, 
``When I saw you playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall, I thought you were a lot taller guy.'' [Laughter] And 
I said, ``That's why I got elected President. I was 6'8'' back then.'' 
[Laughter] But I still think you did a good job, Bobby, and I thank you.
    I want to thank Bill Dannehl. Thank you, 
Harry Smith. I enjoyed meeting Willie 
Davidson today. And I thank Tom 
Buffenbarger, the president of the 
International Association of Machinists, for being here and joining us 
today.
    I want to thank Mayor Robertson for 
welcoming me to York, and all the county commissioners and legislators 
and others who are here. And I want to say a special word of 
appreciation again, Jeffrey, to you for 
making me feel so welcome here and for the nice things you said about 
Bill Daley, behind his back. Usually, when 
you talk behind somebody's back, you're not saying nice things. 
[Laughter] So Daley is up here talking, and Jeff is telling me what a 
good Secretary of Commerce he is. And I will say, Secretary Daley, you 
have been superb, and we're grateful for what you do for the United 
States.
    Now, you may remember this, some of you, but after I was nominated 
for President, way back in the summer of 1992, Al and Tipper Gore and 
Hillary and I got on a bus, and we started this bus tour. Our very first 
overnight stop was in York, Pennsylvania. And I'm sure none of you were 
there when we got in. We got in about a quarter to one, but the crowd 
was about the size that it is today. And I looked at that crowd. It was 
in the middle of the night, you know; we'd been stopped everywhere along 
the way, and I decided I'd take a bus tour so I could go see normal 
people. We went out to all these little towns. And then we got to York, 
it was the middle of the night, and there was this huge throng there. 
And I popped out, and I looked at Hillary, I said, ``You know, we might win this election''--
[laughter]--``and we'd better not mess it up.''
    When I was here before, I didn't get to come and visit Harley-
Davidson. And I wish I had, because since then--I had a beautiful Harley 
jacket before I came here, that I got in Milwaukee, but I gave it to a 
guy who worked for me because he thought he was going to ride to heaven 
on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. So when he retired, the only thing I 
could think of to give him that really reflected the service he had 
given to our country and to me was my jacket, which I hated to part 
with. But the only gifts that really count are the ones that you'd like 
to keep yourself, I think sometimes. So today I got another one, and I 
thank you. I love it.
    You know, Bill Daley was talking about being over in the United Arab 
Emirates and how they were dying to have more motorcycles and other 
paraphernalia to sell. And I told Jeff 
when he mentioned it, one of the great treasures of being the President 
is having the opportunity to meet people around the world you would 
never meet and make friends with them. A person who became a particular 
personal friend of mine and of my wife's was the late King Hussein of 
Jordan. And some of you may know, he was a very satisfied Harley 
customer.
    When Hussein and his wife, Queen Noor, came to 
stay with us a few years ago and we became very good friends, he gave me 
a gift that I treasure that's still up in the White House today. It's a 
picture of himself and his wife in very casual clothes in the Jordanian 
desert, astride a Harley.
    My best Harley story--I was just recently in Paris on my way to 
Sarajevo and Bosnia to try to settle the outstanding issues of all the 
Balkan wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. So I stopped in France to have a 
meeting with the President of France, and I went to the American 
Ambassador's residence in Paris. Now if you ever saw that house, you'd 
want to be Ambassador to France, too. [Laughter] It's a beautiful place, 
built in the 1700's, just takes your breath away to walk in, these grand 
gardens and this beautiful marble foyer when you walk in. In the 
beautiful marble foyer when you walk in now, replete with all the proper 
lighting, is a stunning, 1944 Harley-Davidson. [Laughter]
    And the way it got there is that when your predecessors were making 
motorcycles for the war effort, some of them were sent in packages, to 
be assembled to our allies in Europe. And some of them went to 
Yugoslavia, where Mr. Tito was fighting the Nazis. Two of them were 
never opened, and the son of the American Ambassador actually came upon 
these 54-year-old boxes of unassembled 1944 Harleys last year, and he 
gave one to his daddy. And now, if you ever go to France, it's now the 
main tourist attraction of the American Embassy, is a 1944 Harley. It is 
so beautiful, and I know you'd be proud of it.

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    I came here today not just because I wanted to see you and not just 
because I wanted to come back to York to thank the people of this 
community and this State for being so good for the last 7 years and 
through two elections to me and my wife and Vice President and Mrs. 
Gore. I came here because I want America to know exactly what you have 
done and how.
    The recovery of this company since the 1980's has been truly 
remarkable. When you were down in the dumps, people were saying American 
industry was finished, that we couldn't compete in the global economy, 
that the next century would belong to other countries and other places. 
Today, you're not just surviving; you're flourishing, with record sales 
and earnings and one of the best managed companies in America, according 
to Industry Week. According to management and labor, one of the reasons 
you're the best managed company in America is that you have a genuine 
partnership between labor and management, where all employees are 
valuable and expected to make good decisions on their own for the 
benefit of the common enterprise. And I thank you for setting that 
example. I wish every manufacturer in America would model it.
    I came here because I knew before I got here--although I had never 
quite experienced the full force of it until you were shouting and 
screaming and having such a good time--I knew that this was about more 
than making bikes for profit, more than selling attractive leather 
jackets. What we see here today is how people feel when they have got a 
job that they do well, that gives them not only a decent income but a 
full measure of dignity and pride.
    I used to tell people all the time that politics is about a lot more 
than economics. But if you get the economics right, people figure out 
how to live and shape good lives and raise their children and build 
strong communities. And if you don't get the economics right, then you 
have to deal with a lot of the other values issues, extraordinary 
welfare rates and higher crime rates and all those other problems.
    I want people to see that you have, yes, turned a company around, 
yes, you make an exciting product, and you sell it all around the world, 
but that you do it in the right way, a way that makes you proud to come 
to work every day. It puts a spring in your step and a shout in your 
voice and a light in your eyes. That is what I want for every American 
working family, and I hope that more people will follow your lead so 
that more people can stand up and shout every day just for the joy of 
going to work and being part of a common enterprise and doing something 
they can be profoundly proud of. Thank you, thank you, thank you for 
that example.
    The second point I want to make is the point that Secretary Daley 
has already mentioned. To really do as well as you can, you have to sell 
these wonderful products not only around the country but around the 
world. And I think that's very important.
    In 1973, when the first Harley rolled off the assembly line here, 
America exported only 6,300 motorcycles. By last year, that number had 
increased to 66,000. Today, you're selling about a quarter of your bikes 
around the world from Costa Rica to Korea, from central Europe to the 
Middle East. The global market for motorcycles, and for Harleys, is 
exploding. It's a big part of your future.
    And in order for it to be a part of your future and our future, 
America has to continue to support expanding trade on fair terms to all, 
including Americans. Now, this is a big issue. And I want you to just 
give me a couple minutes of serious time here to talk about it.
    When I got elected in 1992, I don't think there's any way in the 
world a Governor of a small southern State--in the affectionate terms 
that President Bush used then to describe me--would have been elected 
President if we hadn't had economic distress, social division, political 
drift, and a Government discredited. You all remember that. It was tough 
in this country. It was tough in this State.
    And I had spent 12 years--at that time, not quite 12, a little over 
10--working as Governor of my State, trying to figure out how this 
economy works, how the education system plays into the economy, how I 
could actually get up and go to work every day and create the conditions 
and give people the tools to make the life of their dreams. And I asked 
the American people, I said, ``Look, give me a chance to put people back 
at the center of our politics, to create opportunity for every 
responsible citizen, to create a community that every American has a 
chance to be a part of. And give me a chance to put in some new ideas. I 
believe we can grow the economy and protect the environment. I believe 
we can move people from welfare to work and still allow them to take 
care of their children.

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I believe we can be tough on crime and still do more to keep kids out of 
trouble in the first place. I believe we can do more to help people 
succeed at home and at work. I believe we can have a trading system that 
expands trade and still protects legitimate labor rights and our 
responsibilities to the environment. I believe we can have a community 
where all of us serves more and help one another reach our common 
dreams.'' Anyway, I said, ``The center of this has to be an economic 
strategy, and mine is very simple. I want to get rid of the deficit, but 
I want to find a way to invest more money in education, in technology, 
in training, and in research. And I want to expand trade.'' To me, it 
was simple math: we have 4 percent of the world's people with 22 percent 
of the world's income. You don't have to be a genius to figure out, if 
you want to keep 22 percent of the world's income with 4 percent of the 
world's people, you've got to sell something to the other 96 percent.
    And yet, I knew people were afraid of that. They were afraid that if 
we opened our borders here, a lot of our lower wage workers would be put 
out of business by people who worked for even less money abroad, and 
they might not ever get another chance. They were afraid a lot of our 
well-paid workers would not do well, because we'd have markets opened to 
our competitors in those areas, but they wouldn't open their markets to 
ours. A lot of people were afraid we would see a big transfer of wealth 
to poor countries, but the money would stay in a few hands, and it 
wouldn't flow down to the workers there, and it would lead to a 
degradation of the environment in ways that could hurt us. That was 
especially an issue along the Rio Grande River when we were working out 
the trade agreement with Mexico. So there was all this fight about it.
    Well, the results of the last 7 years are in, and it's not an 
argument anymore. We have the longest peacetime expansion in history, 
the highest homeownership in history, 19.8 million new jobs, the lowest 
unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the 
lowest poverty rates in 20 years, the first back-to-back budget 
surpluses in 42 years, and the Federal Government is the smallest it's 
been in 37 years. The record is in.
    Now I might add, there's a lot of women in this plant. Last month 
the female unemployment rate was the same as the overall unemployment 
rate, 4.1 percent. That was the lowest unemployment rate for women in 46 
years. And from 1993 until the end of 1997, when the Asian economy 
collapsed and the Russian economy had such great difficulty, until that 
point, 30 percent of this growth came from exports. And an enormous 
amount of it came because of improvements and advances in technology, 
not just computers in Silicon Valley but the computer programs running 
all these machines I saw on the plant floor here today, a lot of them 
taking the most dangerous jobs, some of the jobs that caused people to 
have long-term injuries, away, so that you can work and make a 
contribution and make these motorcycles at some less risk and wear and 
tear to yourselves.
    Thirty percent of our growth came from exports, until we had the 
Asian collapse. And they're coming back now. We've worked hard to help 
them. They're coming back now.
    Now, in spite of these economic statistics--I mean, here's why we're 
here, apart from the fact that Bill Daley 
and I wanted to come here. And we're glad we got our jackets, and we 
really wish we were leaving with motorcycles. But I have to wait a year 
and a half, you know? I've got to wait a year and a half. I couldn't 
bear all the stories out here if I rode around on a motorcycle for a 
while.
    But let me tell you, the reason we're here, to be fair, is that, 
ironically, in spite of all those economic numbers I just recited, 
there's actually more division and controversy over whether trade is or 
isn't good for us today in Washington than there was in 1993 and in 1994 
when we joined the World Trade Organization and set off this explosion 
of economic activity.
    And again I say, I think it's because people are afraid that 
Americans always get a raw deal. They see we have a big trade deficit--
that's because we've got even more money than we produce for. We buy 
things from other countries, but we also sell a lot abroad. We keep 
setting records for our exports. And a lot of what we sell abroad 
supports higher wages in America. The average trade-related job pays 
almost 20 percent more than a job unrelated to trade, like yours do. You 
know that.
    So we have to find a way not just for big business leaders and 
people like me who live in Washington, who, you know, get a job that 
lasts for a term of years, regardless. We have to find ways for people 
like you, that get up and go to work every day and will have a lot

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of job security when you're doing well, and people who aren't in 
unionized plants and who may be working for low wages and who feel more 
vulnerable. We have to find a way to build a consensus in America so 
that all Americans understand that if we want to keep growing this 
economy, raising wages, creating jobs, we've got to stick with what has 
brought us this far.
    We've got to keep paying down this debt. We can make America debt-
free in 15 years, for the first time since 1835, if we stay on the 
budget plan that I've laid out. And that will be great for you. Why 
should you care if we're debt-free? Because if the Government is out of 
debt, this business can borrow money at lower cost, and you will have 
lower home mortgage rates. You will have lower car payment rates. If you 
send your kids to college, the college loans will be lower. Just because 
of the amount we've reduced the deficit already, the average home 
mortgage costs the average American working family $2,000 a year less 
and the average car payment is $200 a year less and the average college 
loan is $200 a year less. We ought to keep going until we get America 
out of debt for the first time since 1835, so the money will be there at 
the lowest possible costs for the American enterprise system to create 
jobs and improve lives. That's important.
    The second thing we ought to do is to find a way to continue to 
expand trade. You know, we just had a meeting, and I was told, well, 
just what you heard here in the speech: Thank you very much for helping 
us get into the Japanese market, and we're doing well there, but there 
are still some barriers there. I hear that everywhere. So next month in 
Seattle, we're going to have a chance to make the global trading system 
stronger, to tear down more tariffs, to deal with more non-tariff 
barriers, to make it clear that if countries want access to our markets, 
we have to have access to theirs, but basically, to commit to expanding 
trade. Now that is what is in the interest of Harley Davidson, and that 
is what is in the interest of the 21st century American economy.
    So I came here to say, we can have more companies like yours. We can 
have more success stories like yours. This company can have more 
employees like you. But if we're going to do it, we have to find a way 
to expand trade. There's 4 percent of us. We've got 22 percent of the 
income. We've got to sell something to the other 96 percent. It's just 
as simple as that. But we will never be able to do it unless working 
people believe that trade benefits ordinary American families.
    You know, the politicians and the CEO's can talk until they're blue 
in the face. But we still have elections in this country, and in the 
end, you guys run the show. And it's a good thing. That's why we're 
still around here after 200 years. But if we can't convince people like 
you that we're right about this trade issue, then we are going to shrink 
America's future prospects. It's as simple as that.
    You know, I want you all to watch Seattle when it rolls around. 
Every group in the world with an axe to grind is going to Seattle to 
demonstrate. I'll have more demonstrators against me than I've had in 
the whole 7 years I've been President. I'm kind of looking forward to 
it. [Laughter] I'll tell you why. I told them all I wanted them to come. 
I want all the consumer groups to come. I want all the environmental 
groups to come. I want everybody who thinks this is a bad deal to come. 
I want everybody to get all this out of their system and say their piece 
of mind. And I want us to have a huge debate about this.
    But I'm telling you, I've worked really hard for you the last 7 
years to turn this economy around and to get it going in the right 
direction. I've worked hard to make sure other people play by the rules, 
not just in York, Pennsylvania, but in York, England, and in York, 
western Australia.
    And now, as I look ahead to the last year and a couple of months of 
my term, I try to think of what things I can still do that will allow 
this prosperity to go on and on and that will embrace people who haven't 
yet been affected by it. We still have people in places who haven't been 
picked up by this recovery. And I want this to go on. It's already the 
longest peacetime expansion in history. In February it'll be the longest 
economic expansion, including those that embraced our World Wars. But we 
can keep it going. But only if we find more customers and more 
investment in a non-inflationary way, and there's only two places to 
find it. You've got to go to the places in America which have had no 
recovery and to the people who are still on welfare or otherwise left 
out, or you've got to sell more stuff overseas.
    Therefore, I say to you--I don't think the trading system is 
perfect, by the way. I have argued until I'm blue in the face, and I 
will

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continue to argue that when we make these trade rules, we need to take 
the concerns of ordinary citizens into account. We should be growing the 
economy not just in America but everywhere and still improving the 
environment.
    Let me tell you, compared to 7 years ago, with all these jobs, in 
America, the air is cleaner; the water is cleaner; the food is safer. 
We've set aside more land to protect it for sportspeople and for 
tourists and people that just want to be out in nature, than any 
administration in the history of this country, except those of Franklin 
and Theodore Roosevelt. You can improve the economy and improve the 
environment at the same time. People ought to have that everywhere. They 
ought to have that security everywhere.
    Working people everywhere, even if they can't enjoy the same income 
you do, ought to have access to basic labor rights. We shouldn't be 
having child labor in some of these countries producing products to 
compete in our markets and exploit children when they ought to be in 
school. We ought to have basic, decent labor standards for people 
everywhere.
    And I believe--that's why I'm glad the demonstrators are coming. I 
want us to try to find a way to build a consensus where we can expand 
trade and respect the rights of labor and the environment.
    But let me tell you something. You know this. You think about your 
own life. If we have more trade and it's good for you and it's good for 
those countries, don't you think it's more likely that working people 
will be better off and their environment will be cleaner? I mean, the 
more money you've got, the more you can afford to give workers wages 
that are increased, and the more you can afford to clean up the 
environment. So I think all these things work together.
    In Seattle, I'm going to ask the trade organization for the very 
first time to establish a working group on trade and labor, so we get 
working people and their concerns involved in the trade process before 
all the decisions are made. I have worked hard to make environment a 
part of this. I think it's important.
    But I came here for this simple reason. This is a great company. 
You've got a great union. You've found a successful way to compete in 
the world. You represent the future of the American economy. But if I 
cannot convince the decisionmakers in Washington and ordinary people 
like you all across America that a key part of the economic success 
we've enjoyed in the last 7 years and the economic success America can 
enjoy in the years ahead requires us to continue to break down barriers 
to trade, then in the future, when I'm not around anymore, you won't 
have the economic prosperity that I think you deserve.
    So I ask you to think about this. I thank you for being so quiet and 
listening to this. I wouldn't be for this if I didn't think it was right 
for you, if I didn't think it was good for ordinary Americans. But I'll 
leave you with this thought: We live in a world that is smaller and 
smaller, and that is either going to make us more prosperous and more 
secure or more vulnerable and more insecure. If we don't trade with 
other people and help them to get involved in a cycle of growth with us, 
and you have more and more people that are poor, with open borders, 
you're going to have more drug trafficking, more organized crime, more 
political terrorism, and more headaches. And everybody everywhere will 
be more vulnerable to it.
    On the other hand, if we make a living by selling more of our things 
overseas and the price of that is to let people sell more of their 
things to us and they do better and their children do better, you will 
have more cooperation and a far more interesting world for your children 
to live in.
    I believe the best days of this country are still ahead. I believe 
the life our kids and grandkids are going to have will be truly amazing. 
Within 10 years, children might actually be born with a life expectancy 
of a hundred years. Their mothers will take home with them from the 
hospital a map of the children's genetic system, which will say, your 
child has the following strengths and the following problems, but if you 
do these 10 things in the child's upbringing, you will dramatically 
reduce the fact that your little girl will get breast cancer or your 
little boy will develop colon cancer. It will be an amazing future.
    But we have to do the big things right. That's what you do here. You 
do the big things right. And you know a lot of little mistakes will be 
made. You know even you aren't perfect. You know mistakes will be made, 
but if you get the big things right, you know it's going to come out all 
right.
    What I'm trying to do, with this new trade round in Seattle, 
Washington, and with these speeches across the country, is to make sure

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as Americans, we get the big things right. Should we fight for fair 
trade? You bet. Did we get a lot of steel dumped on us when the Asian 
and the Russian economies went down, and was it unfair, and did I have 
to push hard to get it out? You bet. Did you deserve trade protection 
several years ago when you got it? Absolutely you did.
    Do we have to make the system work right? Yes. That's true. You've 
got to make the system work right. But let's not lose the big point: if 
we want to continue to grow, have high incomes, low unemployment--the 
lowest minority unemployment in the history of the country, lowest 
women's unemployment in 46 years, the lowest overall unemployment in 30 
years--if we want that, if we want a country growing together, a part of 
our strategy has got to be to sell more, not just Harleys but everything 
we can possibly sell, around the world.
    So I ask you, don't let this trade debate be the province of 
politicians and CEO's. You embrace it. It's your future and your 
children's future. And every company can be like Harley. But we have to 
embrace the world and say, ``We are not afraid. We can get the big 
things right.''
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1 p.m. in a tent at the Harley-Davidson 
Plant. In his remarks, he referred to Jeffrey L. Bleustein, chief 
executive officer, and Willie G. Davidson, vice president of styling, 
Harley-Davidson Motor Co.; Bobby Ramsey, chief shop steward, and William 
Dannehl, York facility general manager, Harley-Davidson Motor Co.; Harry 
Smith, president, Local 175, International Union of Machinists; and 
Mayor Charles Robertson of York.