[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 46 (Monday, November 22, 1993)]
[Pages 2395-2403]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Seattle APEC Host Committee

 November 19, 1993

    Thank you so much for that warm welcome, and thank you, all of you, 
for everything you have done to make this conference of the Asian-
Pacific economic council a success. I want to thank your Governor for 
his leadership in coming all the way to Washington, DC, to help me pass 
the NAFTA agreement and for speaking up for it, and as a leader of the 
State which leads America in per capita trade. I want to thank my good 
friend Mayor Rice, who heads this wonderful city which has been voted 
the best city in America in which to do business, in no small measure 
because of your Mayor.
    I'm glad to see my friend and former colleague Governor Roberts out 
there. I must say I sort of jumped when Governor Lowry introduced her as 
his neighbor to the south. I never thought of Oregon in the south 
before. That's a lesson for this whole conference: Perspective is very 
important. [Laughter]
    I have one member of your delegation here, Congressman Norm Dicks, 
who came back with me yesterday; and Speaker Foley is on the way. But 
I'm glad to see him here. The Washington delegation has been enormously 
supportive of this administration in the cause of economic expansion, 
and I am very grateful for that.
    Senator Murray wanted to come back with me also, but she's on the 
floor of the Senate even as I speak here, debating the crime bill and 
trying to pass it with 100,000 new police officers and the Brady bill 
and an historic ban on assault weapons, which she's working hard to keep 
in the bill.
    I love Seattle. I always love to come here. I called home last 
night, and both my wife and my daughter had chewed me out because I was 
here, and they weren't. We've had some wonderful days here. This morning 
I got up, and I went running in Green Lake

[[Page 2396]]

Park. And I didn't turn green, but I nearly did. It was a vigorous run.
    I am delighted that so many members of our administration came with 
me: The Secretary of Commerce, Ron Brown, my Chief of Staff, Mack 
McLarty, and our National Economic Adviser, Bob Rubin, are over here to 
my right, but we also have the Trade Ambassador, Mickey Kantor, here and 
the Secretary of State, Warren Christopher. They've all come here to 
make it clear how important we believe this wonderful meeting is to our 
future interests, as I know you do. I'm glad to see so many of my 
friends here from other States in the West and, indeed, from all across 
America.
    This organization, APEC, has historically had 15 members that 
together account for more than half the world's output: Australia, 
Brunei, Canada, China, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New 
Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Chinese Taipei, 
Thailand, and the United States. At this meeting, we are adding Mexico 
and Papua New Guinea. This will be the first time that the leaders of 
all of these economies have gathered together. APEC reflects the Asian-
Pacific values of harmony and consensus building. Our goal this week 
will be to do some of both.
    This city is the appropriate place to have this meeting. Not only is 
Washington State the most trade-oriented State in the Union, but as I 
learned from the Governor on the way up the stairs when I asked him, 80 
percent of your trade is tied to the Asian-Pacific region, and 90 
percent of the imports to this port in Seattle come from Asia. Over half 
of Boeing's planes, Microsoft's computer programs, and Washington's 
wheat are sold abroad.
    Today I want to talk with you who have done so much to make this 
meeting a reality about why APEC and the Asian-Pacific region will play 
a vital role in our American quest to create jobs and opportunity and 
security. And I want to begin by talking about what I believe our 
broader purposes as a nation must be as we near the end of this 
tumultuous century.
    Once in a great while, nations arrive at moments of choice that 
define their course and their character for years to come. These moments 
are always hard, because change is always hard, because they are steeped 
in controversy, because they are often full of risk. We know and regret 
the moments when our Nation has chosen unwisely in the past, such as 
when we turned the world toward protectionism and isolationism after 
World War I or when we failed for so long to face up to the awful 
consequences of slavery. We celebrate the chapters of American history 
in which we chose boldly: the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana 
Purchase, the containment of communism, the embrace of the civil rights 
movement.
    Now we have arrived again at such a moment. Change is upon us. We 
can do nothing about that. The pole stars that guided our affairs in the 
past year have disappeared. The Soviet Union is gone. Communist 
expansionism has ended. At the same time, a new global economy, a 
constant innovation, and instant communication is cutting through our 
world like a new river, providing both power and disruption to the 
people and nations who live along its course.
    Given the disappearance of the Soviet threat and the persistence of 
problems at home, from layoffs and stagnant incomes to crime rates, many 
Americans are tempted to pull back and to turn away from the world.
    This morning, I ran with some of my friends from Seattle, and we 
were talking about the irony that some of us felt being so excited about 
this meeting and all of its promise and prosperity. And one of my 
friends who is a judge here was going to court to deal with candidates 
for parole and talking to me about all the young children who are in 
trouble, even in this, one of our most vibrant cities. In times like 
this, it is easy to just turn away. Our people have a right to feel 
troubled. The challenge of the global economy and our inadequate 
response to it for years is shaking the moorings of middle class 
security. So are the destructive social developments here at home and 
our inadequate response to them. But we simply cannot let our national 
worries blind us to our national interests. We cannot find security in a 
policy of withdrawal guided by fear. We must, we must pursue a strategy 
of involvement grounded in confidence in our ability to do well in the 
future.

[[Page 2397]]

    Our security in this new era clearly requires us to reorder our 
military forces and to refine our force structure for the coming years. 
But our national security also depends upon enlarging the world's 
community of market democracies because democracies make more peaceful 
and constructive partners. That's why we're leading an ambitious effort 
to support democratic and market reforms in all the nations of the 
former Soviet Union.
    And more than ever, our security is tied to economics. Military 
threats remain, and they require our vigilance and resolve. But 
increasingly, our place in the world will be determined as much by the 
skills of our workers as by the strength of our weapons, as much by our 
ability to pull down foreign trade barriers as our ability to breach 
distant ramparts.
    As President I've worked to put these economic concerns of our 
people at the heart of our domestic and our foreign policy. We cannot 
remain strong abroad unless we are strong at home. Stagnant nations 
eventually lose the ability to finance military readiness, to afford an 
activist foreign policy, or to inspire allies by their examples. You 
have only to look at what happened to the former Soviet Union to see 
that lesson writ large. It collapsed from the inside out, not from the 
outside in.
    At the same time, creating jobs and opportunities for our people at 
home requires us to be engaged abroad, so that we can open foreign 
markets to our exports and our businesses. Today exports are the life 
blood of our economic growth. Since the mid-1980's, half our increases 
in incomes and almost all the expansion and manufacturing jobs in the 
United States have been tied to exports. This trend will continue. All 
wealthy nations--and many more than we--are having difficulty creating 
jobs and raising incomes even when there is economic growth. Why is 
that? Because workers in advanced countries must become ever more 
productive to deal with competition from low-wage countries on the one 
hand, and high-skilled, high-tech countries on the other. Being more 
productive simply means that fewer and fewer people can produce more and 
more goods.
    In an environment like that, if you want to increase jobs and raise 
incomes, the only way to do it is to find more customers for each 
country's product. There is no alternative. No one has yet made any 
convincing case that any wealthy country can lower unemployment and 
raise incomes by closing up its borders. The only way to do it is to 
expand global growth and to expand each country's fair share of global 
trade. This country must do both.
    To prosper, therefore, we have to try to get all nations to pursue a 
strategy of growth. I have worked hard on that. For 10 years, I watched 
America go to these G-7 meetings and be hammered on by other nations to 
reduce our deficit, to stop taking money out of the global pool of 
investment capital, to help to contribute to global growth by showing 
some discipline here at home. Well, we've done that. We've done that. 
And now we must get our partners in Europe and Japan to also follow 
strategies that will promote global growth.
    Much of our trade deficit problems today are the result directly of 
slow economic growth abroad. And this Nation now is growing more rapidly 
than all of our wealthiest competitors. We must do that. But we must 
also compete, not retreat. We cannot confuse our objectives with our 
problems. We have no alternative, even in a time of slow global economic 
growth, to taking the steps to expand world trade.
    We are pursuing a new global trade agreement under GATT by the end 
of this year. In July, we negotiated a market opening agreement at the 
G-7 to help advance the GATT process. That market opening agreement 
offers the prospect of hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the American 
economy.
    We have placed our vital relationship with Japan on a new foundation 
that will allow our workers and our businesses greater access to 
Japanese markets when we complete the process. We have established a new 
dialog for economic cooperation with Korea aimed at improving trade and 
the regulatory environment for the United States and other foreign 
businesses in that nation.
    Now, after a long and difficult national debate, we're about to 
secure something I have

[[Page 2398]]

fought for tooth and nail, as the previous speakers discussed, the North 
American Free Trade act. I fought for NAFTA because I believe it will 
create American jobs and a lot of them and because I believe it will 
improve the quality of our life and because I know it will lead us to 
similar agreements with the rest of the market democracies in Latin 
America and because I believe that it sends a message that our 
hemisphere wanted to hear and that the world needs to hear: The cold war 
may be over, but the United States is not about to pull up its stakes 
and go home. We will remain engaged in the world.
    This, after all, is the real significance of NAFTA. It does not 
create a trading bloc; it is a building block in our efforts to expand 
world economic opportunity and global growth and, in the process, to 
promote jobs and opportunity for Americans.
    Wednesday's vote for NAFTA enables me to begin this APEC meeting 
bolstered by a bold expression of America's intent to remain involved in 
the world. And the NAFTA vote combined with this APEC conference greatly 
strengthens our push for an even bigger potential breakthrough, a new 
GATT agreement.
    I want to be clear about this. This Nation will not accept a flawed 
agreement, but if we can achieve one that meets our standards, the 
benefits to our people could be enormous. Over the first 10 years, a 
good GATT agreement could create 1.4 million American jobs and boost the 
average American family income by $1,700 a year. Over a decade, it could 
expand the world's economy by $5 trillion. This, my fellow Americans, is 
the answer to 20 years of stagnant wages for the hard-working middle 
class.
    Our willingness to fight for these initiatives, for NAFTA, for an 
invigorated APEC, for a good new GATT agreement, should make it clear to 
the world that America will lead the charge against global recession and 
the pressures for retrenchment it has created, not just here in our 
country but in all the advanced nations of the world. Years from today, 
Americans will look back in these months as a moment when our Nation 
looked squarely at a new economic era and did not flinch from its 
challenges.
    As we exert our leadership in the global economy, we have to pursue 
a three-part strategy. We must first continue to make our economy and 
our people more competitive. Second, we must focus our global 
initiatives on the fastest growing regions. Third, we must create new 
arrangements for international relations so the forces of this era 
benefit our people as well as our partners.
    Our first challenge involves actions here at home. After years of 
neglect we're putting our economic house in order so we can compete and 
win abroad. We've enacted a sweeping deficit reduction measure that 
points the way back to solvency. The deficit this year was cut about $50 
billion below where it was estimated to be on the day that I took 
office, largely because of plummeting interest rates that are directly 
resultant from the deficit reduction efforts.
    We're investing in education and training and the knowledge and 
skills of our people and the technologies of the future. We're working 
to ensure that we have the means to adjust to a dynamic world economy. 
We created some special bridge programs for any workers displaced by 
NAFTA. And early next year, I will propose a plan to transform America's 
unemployment system into a reemployment system of lifetime education and 
training and job placement services for workers who have to change jobs 
many times. Particularly as we enact NAFTA, we must recognize that we 
have a solemn obligation to make our involvement in international trade 
serve the interest of our people. That means they have to be able to 
adjust to change.
    And if I might just add a parenthesis here to all of you who are 
very much future oriented, this country today is really being limited in 
what we can do because so many of our systems, economic and social, are 
organized for conditions that no longer exist. We are not organized to 
make the changes we all want to make.
    The unemployment system is simply an example of that. The 
unemployment system was created at a time when the average length of 
unemployment was shorter than it is today and when the average 
unemployed person when called back to work went back to his or her 
former employer, which is not

[[Page 2399]]

the case today. So unemployment could literally be a more passive 
system. You could draw money out of it. Your wage would go down for 
awhile, but you knew you'd be called back to your old employer. That's 
fine for a static economy. It doesn't work for a dynamic economy where 
the average 18-year-old must change jobs seven times in a lifetime, 
where the average unemployed person is unemployed for longer, and when 
most people don't get called back to the same job they gave up.
    The unemployment system, in short, is now an unfair tax on employers 
because it doesn't function and a rip-off for employees because it 
doesn't help them. Why? Because the system was organized for a reality 
that isn't there anymore. So what the Labor Secretary is trying to do is 
to set up a system where people who lose their jobs immediately--and 
even before they lose their jobs, if possible--begin training programs, 
begin job placement programs, begin thinking about what the future 
really holds, instead of living with a system that was yesterday's 
reality and is today's sham.
    Time here does not permit this, but there are a lot of creative 
people in this room, and I cannot resist this opportunity to say, if you 
will look at the operative systems in the courts, in the juvenile 
system, in all the social systems in this country, in the education and 
training systems, and in the economic arrangements of this country, you 
will find example after example after example after example where good, 
bright, creative people, who know what the problems are, are struggling 
with organizations which thwart their ability to deal with the world as 
it is. This is one of our great challenges, my fellow Americans, and we 
must face it.
    With the end of the cold war, we're trying to open billions of 
dollars' worth of formerly restricted high-tech goods to export markets. 
We're working to speed the conversion of companies, of workers, of 
communities from defense to commercially successful economies. With the 
Vice President's leadership, we're reinventing Government, reducing 
bureaucracy. We're about to reform our health care system in ways that 
will relieve businesses burdened by unfairly rising costs and provide 
security for families terrorized by uncertain coverage.
    All these steps to make our people and our Nation better prepared to 
thrive in this competitive economy are important. The beginning steps, 
while limited, are beginning to pay off. The deficit has declined. 
Interest rates have been at historic lows. Inflation rate remains low 
while investment is increasing. Housing costs have climbed for 3 
straight months. Employment is increasing. In the first 10 months there 
has been more private sector job increase than in the previous 4 years. 
To be sure, there is still much to do, but this is a good beginning.
    The second part of this strategy must be to expand the sweep of our 
engagement. For decades, our foreign policy focused on containment of 
communism, a cause led by the United States and our European allies. I 
want to emphasize this here today: Europe remains at the core of our 
alliances. It is a central partner for the United States in security, in 
foreign policy, and in commerce. But as our concern shifts to economic 
challenges that are genuinely global, we must look across the Pacific as 
well as the Atlantic. We must engage the world's fastest growing 
economies.
    Our support for NAFTA is a recognition not only that Mexico is our 
closest big neighbor and a very important part of our future but that 
Latin America is the second fastest growing part of the world and a part 
of the world increasingly embracing both democracy and free market 
economics, two things that have eluded that continent for too long.
    The fastest growing region, of course, is the Asian Pacific, a 
region that has to be vital for our future, as it has been for our past. 
A lot of people forget that we began our existence as a nation as a 
Pacific power. By the time of George Washington's Inauguration, American 
ships were already visiting China. In this century, we fought three 
major wars in the Pacific. Thousands of our people still remain 
stationed in the region to provide stability and security in the armed 
services. And our cultural bonds are profoundly strong. There are now 7 
million American citizens of Asian descent.
    The Asian Pacific has taken on an even greater importance as its 
economy has ex- 

[[Page 2400]]

ploded. It's a diverse region spanning 16 time zones, having at least 20 
different major languages and hundreds of dialects. This is a region 
where many rice farmers still harvest their crops by hand, and yet it is 
the home to the world's fastest growing cities. Yet amid this great 
diversity a distinct economy has emerged, built upon ancient cultures 
connected through decentralized business networks, linked by modern 
communications, and joined by common denominators of high investment, 
hard work, and creative entrepreneurship.
    What has happened to Asia in the past half-century is amazing and 
unprecedented. Just three decades ago, Asia had only 8 percent of the 
world's GDP. Today it exceeds 25 percent. These economies are growing at 
3 times the rate of the established industrial nations. In a short time, 
many of these economies have gone from being dominoes to dynamos; from 
minor powers racked by turmoil--[applause]--yes, you can clap for them. 
It's true.
    The press will ask me at the end of this speech who gave me that 
phrase. It came from Win Lord, our Assistant Secretary of State for Far 
Eastern Affairs. He also gives me good ideas, as well as good phrases. 
[Laughter]
    This is a hopeful time. For the first time, for the first time in 
this century, no great military rivalry divides the Asia-Pacific region. 
Active hostilities have yielded to possibilities for cooperation and 
gain. Of course, the region still has problems and dangers. Tens of 
millions of Asians still live on less than a dollar a day. There are 
territorial disputes, ethnic tensions, and weapons proliferation. This 
sudden growth has led to serious environmental strains from smoke-choked 
cities to toxic dumping. And there are human rights abuses and 
repression which continue to affect millions of people throughout the 
region.
    The economic explosion has been a source of anxiety for many 
Americans. Our workers are concerned that their jobs, their markets are 
being lost to Asia. Of the nations that are represented here, I believe 
we have a trade deficit with all but one. These trade imbalances with 
Japan and China alone account for more than two-thirds of our total 
trade deficit. And we do have a trade deficit, as I said, with virtually 
every one of the nations.
    Yet, ultimately the growth of Asia can and should benefit our 
Nation. Over the past 5 years, our exports to every one of these nations 
has increased by at least 50 percent. Much of what Asia needs to 
continue on its growth pattern are goods and services in which we are 
strong: aircraft, financial services, telecommunications, 
infrastructure, and others. Already, Asia is our largest trading 
partner. Exports account for 2.5 million jobs here in America, to Asia. 
Increasing our share of that market by one percent would add 300,000 
jobs to the American economy. This is an effort worth making.
    Of course, we must continue to press the nations to be more open to 
our products as we are to them. We've made a good start with the 
economic framework agreement with Japan, and I look forward to 
discussing the elements of that and the progress we can make with Prime 
Minister Hosokawa later today.
    We're also determined to work with China to eliminate its trade 
barriers and to raise the issue of our continuing concerns over human 
rights and weapons sales. I look forward to doing all that when I meet 
with President Jiang today, in an effort to put our relationship with 
China on a more constructive path but still one that deals with all of 
these issues that are important to the United States.
    We do not intend to bear the cost of our military presence in Asia 
and the burdens of regional leadership only to be shut out of the 
benefits of growth that that stability brings. It is not right. It's not 
in the long-term interest of our Asian friends. And ultimately, it is a 
trade relationship that is simply not sustainable. So we must use every 
means available in the Pacific, as elsewhere, to promote a more open 
world economy through global agreements, regional efforts, and 
negotiations with individual countries.
    As we make these efforts, United States business must do more to 
reach out across the Pacific. I know Seattle's business community 
understands the potential that lies in the Asian-Pacific region. But 
millions of our businesses do not. We cannot have customers

[[Page 2401]]

where we are not there to make the sale. I want American businesses to 
see the opportunities, to hear the success stories not only here but all 
across the Nation. I want more American businesses to follow the 
examples of firms like H.F. Henderson Industries in West Caldwell, New 
Jersey, which manufactures automatic weighing systems. This small firm's 
sales to China, South Korea, Australia, Singapore, and Hong Kong have 
added over two dozen jobs to its payroll of 150. You think about that. 
If every company in America with 150 employees could add two dozen jobs 
by exports to Asia, we would have a much smaller unemployment problem in 
a very short time. We have to do a better job of piercing those markets 
even as we press for them to be open.
    In July, I made my first trip overseas as President to Asia. During 
that trip, I proposed this leaders meeting and described a vision of a 
new Pacific community to underscore the importance we place on working 
for shared prosperity, for security, and for democracy. As I said 
earlier, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Commerce, our Trade 
Representative, they've all come to Seattle, all going to give major 
speeches here, all going to make our presence felt. We want to be a 
partner with all of the other nations that are here in making this 
Pacific community.
    But as I said earlier about our problems here at home with the 
unemployment system, you could also say the same thing about the 
international system. We have to develop new institutional arrangements 
that support our national economic and security interests 
internationally.
    If you look at the end of World War II and the success that flowed 
from it, that didn't happen by accident. Visionaries like Harry Truman 
and George Marshall, George Kennan, Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman 
worked with other nations to build institutions like NATO, the IMF, the 
World Bank, the GATT process. We take it for granted now. But it took 
them a few years to put this together. And it wasn't self-evident at the 
time that it had to be done. And a lot of people thought it was a waste 
of time or effort, and others thought that it would never work, and 
others thought that it wasn't even a good idea. But these people had the 
vision to see that collective security, expanded trade, and growth 
around the world were in the interest of the ordinary American citizen.
    We now have to bring the same level of vision to this time of 
change. We've done that through our vote for NAFTA. We will do so again 
at the NATO summit this January, where I will recommend a new 
partnership for peace to draw Central and Eastern Europe toward our 
community of security. And we're working to build a prosperous and 
peaceful Asian-Pacific region through our work here with APEC.
    This is still a young organization. I want to salute those who had 
the vision to establish it, such as former Australian Prime Minister 
Robert Hawke and others, including President Bush and those in his 
administration who wanted to host this regional leaders meeting in 
Washington State. But I want to say also that we now must imagine what 
this organization should be in the 21st century.
    Over time, there is a lot we may be able to do through this 
organization that no one ever thought about before. It could become a 
forum for considering development priorities in Asia, for working with 
the Asian Development Bank to assure that all can share in the region's 
economic growth. It could help to focus attention on barriers to trade 
and growth. It could evolve into a forum for dispute resolution on 
economic matters.
    The mission of this organization is not to create a bureaucracy that 
can frustrate economic growth but to help build connections among 
economies to promote economic growth. Although we are still only 
formulating APEC's agenda, we can speculate what some of those 
connections might be.
    This organization, for example, could help to set up common 
telecommunication standards so firms don't need to have a different 
product design for each separate country. It could help us to move 
toward an open skies agreement that could lower fares for airline 
passengers and cargo and provide greater consumer choices over routes. 
It could promote solutions to the environmental problems of this 
populous and energy-devouring region, problems that are truly staggering 
today, so that we could guarantee that a pol- 

[[Page 2402]]

luted quality of life does not undermine a rising standard of living.
    Protecting the Pacific environment also can be a particular source 
of American business opportunities. Asia's purchases of environmental 
equipment likely will rise by $40 billion by the end of this decade. And 
our Nation, which has pioneered many of those technologies, should be 
there to claim the large share of that market.
    APEC can complement our Nation's other efforts to open world trade. 
It can provide a counterbalance to our bilateral and our global efforts. 
If we encounter obstacles in a bilateral negotiation, we should be able 
to appeal to other APEC members to help us to resolve the disputes. If 
our efforts to secure global trade agreements falter, then APEC still 
offers us a way to expand markets within this, the fastest growing 
region of the globe.
    I expect this first meeting of APEC leaders to focus on getting 
acquainted and on sharing perspectives. Whatever we do must be done in a 
spirit of genuine partnership and mutual respect in the interest of all 
of the nations involved. This cannot be a United States show. This has 
got to be an Asian-Pacific combined partnership.
    Nonetheless, I believe it is our obligation to propose some tangible 
steps to move forward. We will propose that Secretary Bentsen organize a 
meeting of the APEC's finance ministers to advance our dialog on the 
broad issues affecting economic growth. We will propose the formation of 
an Asia-Pacific business roundtable to promote greater discussion within 
the region's private sectors. We will ask the leaders to endorse the 
establishment of an Asia-Pacific education foundation to promote 
understanding and a sense of community among our region's young people. 
These first steps are small. But we should not understate or 
underestimate the scope of the journey that they could begin.
    Today we take for granted the importance of many institutions that 
seemed unlikely when they were first created. For example, we can't 
imagine now how we could have weathered the cold war without NATO. In 
the same way, future generations may look back and say they can't 
imagine how the Asian-Pacific region could have thrived in such a spirit 
of harmony without the existence of APEC. Even though this organization 
is in its infancy and its first leaders meeting is not intended to make 
decisions, we should not hesitate to think boldly about where such 
efforts could lead.
    For this organization, these meetings and these relationships we are 
forging today can lead our members toward shared expectations about our 
common responsibilities and our common future. Even now we can begin to 
imagine what a new Pacific community might look like by the end of this 
decade, and that's not very far away.
    Imagine an Asian-Pacific region in which robust and open economic 
competition is a source of jobs and opportunity without becoming a 
source of hostility and instability, a sense of resentment or 
unfairness. Imagine a region in which the diversity of our economies 
remains a source of dynamism and enrichment, just as the diversity of 
our own people in America make our Nation more vibrant and resilient. 
Imagine this region in which newly emerging economic freedoms are 
matched by greater individual freedoms, political freedoms, and human 
rights; a region in which all nations, all nations, enjoy those human 
rights and free elections.
    In such a future we could see Japan fast becoming a model of 
political reform as well as an economic colossus, pursuing policies that 
enable our economic relations to be a source of greater mutual benefit 
and mutual satisfaction to our peoples. We could see China expressing 
the greatness and power in its people and its culture by playing a 
constructive regional and global leadership role while moving toward 
greater internal liberalization. We could see Vietnam more integrated 
into the region's economic and political life after providing the 
fullest possible accounting of those Americans who did not return from 
the war there.
    We could even see a Korean Peninsula that no longer braces for war 
but that lives in peace and security because its people, both north and 
south, have decided on the terms of reunification. We could see a region 
where weapons of mass destruction are not among the exports and where 
security and stability are assured by mutual strength, respect, and 
cooperation, a region in which di- 

[[Page 2403]]

verse cultures and economies show their common wisdom and humanity by 
joining to preserve the glory of the Pacific environment for future 
generations.
    Such goals extend beyond tomorrow's agenda. But they must not lie 
beyond our vision. This week our Nation has proved a willingness to 
reach out in the face of change to further the cause of progress. Now we 
must do so again. We must reach out to the economies of the Pacific. We 
must work with them to build a better future for our people and for 
theirs. At this moment in history, that is our solemn responsibility and 
our great opportunity.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:42 a.m. in the Spanish Ballroom at the 
Four Seasons Hotel. A tape was not available for verification of the 
content of these remarks.