[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 20 (Monday, May 24, 1993)]
[Pages 911-913]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 6563--World Trade Week, 1993

 May 19, 1993

By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

    Each year, World Trade Week allows us to highlight the importance of 
international trade, which links the United States with other nations in 
partnership for economic prosperity. It is also a time to recognize the 
importance of our efforts to stimulate domestic economic growth through 
the sale of American products and services abroad.
    For Americans, trade has buttressed our Nation's standing as the 
world's largest and most productive economy. Exports support millions of 
American jobs and account for nearly one-sixth of the employment in the 
U.S. manufacturing and agricultural sectors. In fact, each $1 billion of 
American merchan- 

[[Page 912]]

dise exports supports nearly 19,000 domestic jobs. As a result, 
companies have been formed, factories built, and new industries created. 
And these export-related jobs are good ones, paying on average 17 
percent more than the overall average wage.
    Indeed, it is our ability to modernize and expand our industrial 
production that serves as the foundation for export growth, allowing us 
to develop and produce quality products while identifying marketing 
opportunities at home and abroad. Our ingenuity and our determination to 
be the best make America's products and services among the world's most 
competitive.
    For U.S. products and services to succeed in an increasingly 
competitive global marketplace, however, we must be equally competitive 
at home and abroad. Recently, this Administration announced a broad new 
economic strategy to enhance government/industry cooperation in creating 
new technologies. Through commercialization, these technologies will be 
made available to smaller companies. Small and medium-size businesses 
create half the new jobs in this country and two-fifths of our Gross 
National Product, and many of these firms will seek to increase exports 
of their products. The high-technology sector, which employed about 10 
million people and accounted for more than $100 billion worth of U.S. 
exports in 1992, is crucial to advancing the industrial competitiveness 
of the United States and assuring us of an edge in world markets.
    Creating a climate for American exports requires not only a strong 
domestic economy, but also free and fair access for U.S. products to 
markets abroad. This Administration, therefore, is building a trade 
agenda that will allow U.S. exports to compete on a level playing field 
with our trading partners.
    A top trade-related priority is the North American Free Trade 
Agreement (NAFTA), which will link the United States, Canada, and Mexico 
into a single market of 360 million consumers currently spending $6 
trillion annually. Mexico, once economically isolated from the United 
States, has emerged as our Nation's third largest trading partner. With 
supplemental agreements to address environmental and labor issues, NAFTA 
will be a positive force for creating American jobs.
    In addition to our focus on the NAFTA negotiations, this 
Administration is determined to complete the General Agreement on 
Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Uruguay Round agreement. GATT is an agreement 
binding more than 100 nations to a mutual interest in strengthening the 
global environment for trade. As part of these negotiations, this 
Administration is seeking provisions that ensure free and fair trade for 
American industry, as well as effective bilateral dispute settlement 
mechanisms. A successful Uruguay Round would lower tariff and nontariff 
barriers to manufactured products and other commodities, thereby 
increasing cumulative world output by more than $5 trillion and 
cumulative U.S. output by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years.
    While advancing our Nation's interests through the GATT 
negotiations, the United States and other countries must provide 
financial assistance to ensure key political and economic reforms in 
Russia and the former Soviet republics. By carefully targeting this 
assistance, our Nation will not only encourage progress toward global 
stability, arms control, and nonproliferation, but also help create an 
environment in which trade with that region can flourish.
    Creating a secure and prosperous global environment for trade also 
hinges on continued U.S. efforts to benefit from the great opportunities 
that are available in the high-growth East Asian and Latin American 
markets, two of the fastest growing regions for American exports.
    Although thousands of U.S. companies continue to boost their profit 
margins through exports, thousands of other American firms have yet to 
market their goods abroad. In fact, just 15 percent of American 
companies account for 85 percent of our Nation's exports. With U.S. 
merchandise exports totaling more than $448 billion in 1992, ``World 
Trade Week'' reminds us of the merits of international commerce and the 
vast export opportunities yet to be explored by American business.
    Now, Therefore, I, William J. Clinton, President of the United 
States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the 
Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the 
week begin- 

[[Page 913]]

ning May 16, 1993, as World Trade Week. I invite the people of the 
United States to join in appropriate observances to reaffirm the 
potential of international trade for creating prosperity for all.

    In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this nineteenth day 
of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-three, and 
of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and 
seventeenth.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 10:58 a.m., May 20, 
1993]

Note: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on May 21.