    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [May 12, 2000]
    [Pages 920-925]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Shakopee, Minnesota
    May 12, 2000

        Thank you. Well, first of all let me say I thank you all for coming
    out today. And I'm glad the weather made it easier on us.
        I want to thank Terry and Kitty and Gene Hauer for welcoming us
    to their farm. I think we ought to give them a big hand; we have invaded
    them--[applause]. We managed to find enough unplanted space that I don't
    think we're taking their income away, but we certainly have invaded them
    today.
        Dallas, thank you for your introduction
    and for your example. Secretary Glickman, thank
    you very much for the work you're doing, not only on this issue but on
    so many others to help the farmers of America. And I want to echo what
    you said about David Minge. He's a wonderful
    person. I've loved working with him these years I've been President. He
    is a straight shooter--although he never tells me any of those Norwegian
    jokes he's always telling Glickman--[laughter]--so I expect to get my
    quota before I leave.
        But you should know that he is an
    extraordinarily attentive Representative for you. I don't even know how
    many times he's mentioned some specific thing of importance to the
    people of this district and the people of Minnesota. But if everybody
    worked on me as hard as he has the last 7 years, I wouldn't get anything
    else done, because he really does a good job for you.

    [[Page 921]]

        I want to acknowledge in the audience today the presence of your
    Lieutenant Governor, Mae Schunk; the attorney
    general, Mike Hatch; Treasurer Carol
    Johnson; your State ag commissioner,
    Gene Hugoson--I think that's the right
    pronunciation--and the mayor of Shakopee, Jon Brekke, and his wife and beautiful
    daughter came out to the airport and met me.
    And I have here, somewhere, a beautiful crayon drawing she made for me--
    [laughter]--which I'm going to take back to the White House and save as
    a memory of coming here. It was really beautiful.
        I want to thank Bob Bergland, also, as
    Dan Glickman did. And I understand the former
    Governor of North Dakota, Alan Olson, is here.
    Welcome. I thank you for coming over.
        But I want to say a special word of appreciation to a man who's been
    my friend for 25 years and one of my favorite people in the whole world:
    our former Vice President, your former Senator, and my former Ambassador
    to Japan, Walter Mondale. Thank you for being
    here. Thank you so much. I spent most of my early life listening to him
    speak. I'm just trying to get even now. [Laughter]
        I also want you to know that I brought with me two representatives
    of American agriculture today when I came in on Air Force One, Scott
    Shearer with Farmland Industries, Nick
    Giordano of the National Pork Producers, and
    Susan Keith of the National Corn Growers, and
    they're out there working to help us. I thank them.
        I want to also say to the people who are here from New Ulm, I'm
    sorry that I couldn't come out to your community. I hope you'll give me
    a raincheck. What really happened was--you know, politicians always give
    you some sidewinding excuse. Well, I'll tell you what happened. What
    really happened is, I've got to go back to work in Washington tonight,
    and I have to get back there an hour and a half earlier than I had
    originally thought I had to be there. I'm glad I got to come to the
    Hauers' farm, and I hope I get to come back there.
        We have a community in my home State of Arkansas called Ulm. It's
    near Almyra, which is near Stuttgart--[laughter]--which is near Slovac.
    [Laughter] And they grow rice down there.
        I'm glad to be back in Minnesota. I was in St. Paul last week, at
    America's first charter school, on my education tour. And I'm coming
    back in a couple of weeks to speak at Carleton College. If I come
    anymore, you'll make me pay taxes here, but I've had a good time.
    [Laughter]
        I'd like to also acknowledge somebody who can't be here today, but
    somebody I really want to thank. Last week we had an astonishing event
    at the White House with President Carter and
    President Ford and virtually every living
    former Secretary of State, former Secretaries of Agriculture, former
    Trade Ambassadors, former Secretaries of Defense, National Security
    Advisers, two former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. A whole
    history of the last 50 years in America was represented in the White
    House that day--except for Vice President Mondale's predecessor as
    Ambassador to Japan, Mike Mansfield,
    our former Senate majority leader; he's 98 years old now. When he was
    15, he lied about his age to get into World War I. [Laughter] He's from
    Montana, and he's about--he would give a speech about as short as the
    one Terry gave today. [Laughter] Sort of
    consonant with coming from the northern part of the United States.
        But when we swore Fritz in, Mike Mansfield came, and I said--you
    know, he was then, I think, 91 or 92--I said, ``You know, he walks 4
    miles a day.'' And Mansfield stood up in the back, and he said,
    ``Five.'' [Laughter] So when he was 98 I said, ``Mike, are you still
    walking every day?'' He said, ``Yeah, but I'm down to 2 miles a day.''
    So I figure if we could all walk 2 miles a day at 98, we'd be doing
    pretty well.
        I also want to thank your Governor, Jesse Ventura, who was there. He was the only sitting Governor who
    came. And he's been just great to support this initiative, and I'm
    grateful for him. It's good for you, and it's good for America. He's not
    a member of my party; he didn't have to do it, and it meant a lot to me
    that he showed up. I hope that it will mean something to you, too.
        When my staff was boning me up on getting ready to come here and
    briefing me about the history of this area, I learned that the first
    citizens of Shakopee--I'll get it right--were pioneers in more than one
    sense. Way back in the 19th century, they were already trading with
    China. China was then the biggest and richest fur market in the world,
    and many of the pelts they bought came from here, from the shores of the
    Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. They found markets in China.

    [[Page 922]]

        Then trade was a small, though interesting part of your past. It's
    going to be a much bigger part of your future, one way or the other.
    That's why I wanted to come here to talk about expanding trade in China,
    what it means for farmers like you, for States like Minnesota, and, even
    more important than that, for the future of our children and America in
    this new century.
        In less than 2 weeks, Congress will vote on whether to provide
    permanent normal trading relation status with China. Now, PNTR, that's
    pretty arcane sounding. But what it means, as you've already heard, is
    that China will join about 130 other countries with whom we have trading
    that is governed by international rules of trade, plus whatever specific
    agreements we have with them.
        In 1979, when President Carter and Vice President Mondale and Bob
    Bergland were involved in opening our relationships with China, we
    signed a trade agreement. And ever since then--and 21 years, now, every
    year--we have granted them what used to be called most-favored-nation,
    but really was normal trading relations. We did it on an annual basis.
    And the idea behind doing it on an annual basis was, we knew we had big
    differences with the Chinese. They were a Communist country; we were a
    democracy. They had labor, human rights, and religious rights practices
    with which we did not agree. We were trying to continue to work with
    them to resolve their differences with Taiwan on a peaceful basis. And
    it was thought that the Congress reviewing this every year would give
    Congress--and through Congress, the President, whoever that happened to
    be--some way of reviewing where we were with China; whether it was in
    our larger national interests, as well as our economic interests, to
    review this every year.
        So now, I am proposing that we give them permanent normal trading
    status and let them come into the World Trading Organization, where
    they'll be governed by the same rules that govern us and all the other
    countries that are in it. And I came to tell you why I think we ought to
    make that change.
        The biggest benefit, as you have heard from Secretary
    Glickman, will probably go to the agricultural
    sector, in economic terms. One out of every three American acres grows
    exports. We are the world's largest exporter of agricultural products.
    During the last 5 years, in spite of the Asian financial collapse and
    the terrible thing it's done to farm prices, we've still seen our
    exports nearly double. If you look at gross cash receipts, trade means
    about twice as much to America's farmers as it does to the economy as a
    whole.
        Minnesota is third in soybean exports and production, fourth in
    corn--feed corn--seventh in overall agricultural exports. In 1998
    Minnesota sold $2.4 billion in agricultural products to foreign markets,
    $316 million to China--more than twice what you sold in 1993, when I
    became President.
        As Secretary Glickman described, the
    magnitude of the Chinese market virtually defies the imagination. There
    are 1.3 billion people in China. It's no wonder already China consumes
    more pork than any other nation. It is also the world's largest growth
    market for soybeans and soybean products. When I was Governor of
    Arkansas, back 15, 16 years ago, I used to go to Taiwan. And Taiwan was
    our biggest export market; they have 17 million people. And since the
    Chinese people are the same, if you extrapolate from 17 million to 1.3
    billion, it's almost incalculable what this could mean for soybeans. The
    dairy consumption in China is going up as people's incomes rise.
        Now, that's the way they are today, with a fairly modest per capita
    income. It is projected that over the next 30 to 50 years, China will
    have the biggest economy in the world. And obviously, as the people grow
    wealthier and move more and more to the city, the markets will grow, not
    only because more people will be able to buy food but the per capita
    food consumption will go up.
        What does it mean for China to go into the World Trade Organization?
    It means they won't subsidize their farm sector as they used to. They're
    already making adjustments--planting less wheat and less cotton, for
    example. There is no way the Chinese farmers can keep pace with the
    growth of their own consumers. But America's farmers can. And Congress
    can give you the chance to do so, but only if it votes for permanent
    normal trading relations. And I want you to understand why: because in
    order for the members of the World Trade Organization to let China in,
    and then to benefit from whatever trade concessions China makes--and
    they've made the most in their agreement with us--every one of the
    members has to agree to treat China like a member. So if we don't vote
    for permanent normal trading relations, it's

    [[Page 923]]

    like we're saying, well, they may be in there, but we're not going to
    treat them like a member. And if we don't do that, what it means is, we
    don't get the benefit of the deal I just described to you. That's what
    this is all about.
        This agreement, which we negotiated--and it's self-serving for me to
    say, I realize that, because it was negotiated by our Trade Ambassador,
    Charlene Barshefsky, with heavy input
    from Secretary Glickman and Gene
    Sperling, my National Economic Adviser, who
    was there in China with her--but it really is a hundred-to-nothing
    agreement economically. Normally, when we negotiate a trade agreement,
    we swap out, just like you do if you make a deal with somebody. Somebody
    says, you know, ``I'll give you this,'' and you say, ``Okay, I'll give
    you that.''
        This is not a trade agreement in that sense. This is a membership
    agreement. They say, ``If you let us into this world trading unit, we'll
    abide by the rules, including rules that we weren't governed by before.
    And, in order to get in it, we'll agree to modernize our economy, which
    means we will drop our tariffs, open our markets, let you sell into our
    markets, let you invest in our markets.'' It is a huge deal.
        If you look beyond agriculture, it used to be that if we wanted to
    sell manufacturing products in China, they'd say, ``Fine; put a plant
    here.'' Or if we wanted to sell some high-tech products, they'd say,
    ``Fine; transfer the technology to us.'' Now--that's one reason we have
    representatives from 3M company here--we'll be able to sell for the
    first time into the Chinese market American cars, for example, without
    putting up auto plants, without transferring the technology.
        But nowhere will the benefits be greater than in agriculture. You've
    already heard from Dallas that export
    subsidies have kept American corn and other products from being priced
    competitively. No more. No more baseless health barriers, which China
    uses or has used to keep our beef and poultry outside their borders; no
    more high tariffs on feed grains, soybeans, vegetables, meat, and dairy
    products. Indeed--as Secretary Glickman reminds
    me from time to time when we have problems with our European neighbors
    and friends--the Chinese have offered us lower tariffs on some farm
    products than the European Union imposes today.
        Now, China's going to grow no matter what we do, and they're going
    to get into the WTO. The only issue here--the only issue is whether we
    are prepared to give up this annual review in return for the economic
    benefits that we have negotiated. That is the decision before the
    Congress, and it seems to me that it's a pretty easy decision. I think
    if Congress turns its back on this opportunity, we'll spend the next 20
    years regretting it. And I know we'll spend the next 20 years paying for
    it, in ways that go far beyond dollars in farm families' pockets.
        This is a vote for our economic security. China agrees to play by
    the same trading rules we do, and if we don't like it, we have two
    options. One is, we can pursue them in the world trading organization
    mechanisms, which means it won't just be America against China, and they
    won't be able to say, ``There are those big, ugly Americans trying to
    take advantage of us.'' It'll be us and everybody else who plays by the
    same rules.
        But in addition to that, you need to know that we negotiated an
    agreement with China unlike any one we have with any other country,
    which says that we can go against them bilaterally, us against them, if
    they dump products in our market, or if for some reason, like changing
    currency, there's an enormous surge of their products in our market
    threatening to dislocate a lot of Americans. And they have agreed to let
    us bring action with a lower standard for proof of injury than we have
    in our own trade laws. Plus which we have got money set aside to monitor
    this agreement in greater detail than any one we've ever had. So I think
    it's a pretty clear issue.
        Now, why isn't everybody for it? Well, some people say, ``Well,
    maybe they won't keep their word.'' Well, we have trade disputes all the
    time. We've got two outstanding with Europe still that haven't been
    resolved, where we just keep running around. But you've got a better
    chance of getting it resolved with people in a rules-based, law-abiding
    international system than outside it.
        Some people say, ``Well, they still do a lot of things we don't
    like.'' Well, that's true. But I can tell you that we'll have a lot more
    influence on Chinese foreign policy, when it comes to the proliferation
    of dangerous weapons, and on human rights and religious rights and
    political rights in China, if we have an open hand of working with them,
    than if we say no, if we turn our backs on them. I am absolutely certain
    of that.
        And I just want to point out, that is why all of our allies in Asia,
    the democracies--Japan,

    [[Page 924]]

    South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand--these countries want us to give
    them normal trading status. They're very worried that we might not do
    this and that it will increase tensions in Asia and increase the chance
    of something bad happening between Taiwan and Japan and make China focus
    more on military buildups than building their economy and their
    relationships with their neighbors. That's why the President-elect of
    Taiwan wants us to approve this.
        That's why Martin Lee, who's the leader of
    the democracy movement in Hong Kong--a man prohibited by law from even
    going to China--if anybody ought to have an axe to grind, you'd think he
    would. He came here to America to tell the Congress they had to vote for
    this because that was the way to get human rights and political freedom
    in China, to put them in a rule-based system of international law.

        Yesterday there was a detailed report in the Washington press
    interviewing dissidents in China, people who have been persecuted for
    their beliefs. Every one interviewed said, America has got to approve
    this, otherwise America will have no influence to try to keep moving
    China toward democracy and freedom.

        You know, we get frustrated, but China is an old country, and it's
    changing fast. Two years ago there were 2 million Internet users. Last
    year there were 9 million. This year there will be over 20 million. At
    some point, you tell me, when they get to 50 or 100 or 150 million--
    which by then will still be barely more than 10 percent of their
    population--the country will change forever. You cannot maintain top-
    down control.

        And I think it might be interesting for you to know that not
    everybody in China wants us to do this. You know who is against it in
    China? The most reactionary elements in the military and the people that
    run those old, uncompetitive state-owned industries that want to keep
    those subsidies coming, that want to keep these markets closed, and that
    want to keep their thumb on the little folks in China.

        Look, this may or may not work out. I can't tell you what the future
    will hold. Nobody knows that. And the Chinese will have to decide what
    path they take to the future. All I know is, this is a good economic
    deal, and it's an imperative national security issue, because we ought
    to at least get caught trying to give every chance to the Chinese to
    take a responsible path to tomorrow, to have a constructive relationship
    with this country when our children are grown, when our grandchildren
    are in school. We don't want a new arms race. We don't want every mutt
    in 2010 or 2020 to be calculating--see the papers full of stories about
    whether we're calculating whether we've got enough nuclear missiles
    against the Chinese.

        We ought to give this a chance. We ought to give the future a chance
    to work. It's a great deal for you now. But as much as I want to help
    the farmers here and the farmers home in Arkansas--so when I go home,
    they'll still let me come around--[laughter]--it's far more important to
    me to do the right thing by our national security, to give our children
    a chance to live in the most peaceful world in human history.

        And that's what this is all about. So I hope you will support David
    Minge. I hope you will ask your Senators to vote
    for this. I hope you will ask the other Members of the Minnesota
    delegation to vote for this. And I hope you will tell people that it is
    clearly the right thing to do economically. It is clearly the next
    logical step from the historic news made in the Carter/Mondale
    administration in 1979.

        But the most important thing is, it gives us a chance to build the
    future of our dreams for our children. People ask me all the time, ``Now
    that you've been President 7 years, what have you learned about foreign
    policy?'' And I always tell them, it's a lot more like real life than
    you think. And 9 times out of 10, you get a lot more reaching out a hand
    of cooperation than you do shaking a clenched fist. That's what this is
    about.

        Now, if they do something that's terrible that we're offended by, we
    don't give up a single right here to suspend our trade relations or do
    anything else that any emergency conditions might dictate. All we're
    doing is saying we'd like to build a future with you if you're willing
    to do it. And we're prepared to work over the long run.

        I thank you for coming here today. I ask you to recognize that this
    is not a foregone conclusion. I believe it is by far the most important
    national security vote that Congress will cast this year. And if you can
    do anything as

    [[Page 925]]

    an American citizen, as well as Minnesota farmers, to help us prevail,
    you'd be doing a great thing for our grandchildren.

        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:35 p.m. in the barnyard at the Hauer
    Farm. In his remarks, he referred to farmers Terry Hauer, his wife Kitty
    and father Gene; Dallas Bohnsack, chair, Scott County Board of
    Commissioners, who introduced the President; former Secretary of
    Agriculture Robert Bergland, member, University of Minnesota Board of
    Regents; Scott Shearer, director of national relations, Farmland
    Government Relations; Nick Giordano, international trade counsel,
    National Pork Producers Council; Susan Keith, senior director of public
    policy, National Corn Growers Association; President-elect Chen Shui-
    bian of Taiwan; and Mayor Jon Brekke of Shakopee, MN, his wife, Barb,
    and their daughter, Maria.