[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 20 (Monday, May 24, 1999)]
[Pages 929-930]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Proclamation 7196--World Trade Week, 1999

May 17, 1999

By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

    World Trade Week provides a valuable opportunity to recognize the 
enormous importance of exports to the United States economy and our way 
of life. In recent years, exports have contributed to almost one-third 
of our economic growth, helping to make today's economy the strongest in 
a generation. Unemployment is at a 30-year low, business investment is 
booming, and private sector growth is on the rise. Every day, an 
increasing number of U.S. companies and farmers realize how crucial 
exports are to their bottom lines. Every day, more and more American 
workers benefit from the fact that exporting firms pay higher salaries, 
experience fewer closings, and generate jobs at a faster rate than do 
firms that do not export. That is why we must continue to open markets 
and expand trade opportunities. At the same time, we must work to ensure 
that increased international trade benefits the world's people, promotes 
the dignity of work, and protects the environment and the rights of 
workers.
    As important as world trade is to our economy today, we are only 
beginning to utilize the commercial potential of the newest 
international marketplace: the World Wide Web. Today the Internet 
connects nearly 150 million people around the world. Each day 52,000 
additional Americans join that number, and users are making as many as 
27 million purchases on the Web each day. Forecasts predict that, in 
just a few years, global electronic commerce--e-commerce--will grow to 
more than $300 billion annually. By 2005 Internet usage in countries 
around the world may account for more than $1 trillion worth of global 
commerce.
    Recognizing the enormous power and promise that e-commerce holds for 
American businesses and consumers, my Administration is working to build 
a framework for global electronic commerce that will keep competition 
free and vigorous, protect consumers, guarantee privacy, and give 
users--not governments--the responsibility of supervising Internet 
trade. Working with the Congress, industry, and State and local 
officials, we have enacted legislation that places a 3-year moratorium 
on new and discriminatory taxes on electronic commerce. We also ratified 
an international treaty to protect intellectual property online. Last 
year, representatives of 132 countries followed our lead and signed a 
WTO Ministerial Declaration to refrain from imposing customs duties on 
electronic commerce.
    Working with our trading partners, industry, and consumer advocates, 
we are extending traditional consumer protections to the arena of 
electronic commerce. Without imposing burdensome regulations that might 
stifle growth and innovation, we have offered incentives to online 
companies to give consumers the protections they need to conduct 
business on the Internet with security and confidence. Finally, we are 
working to speed the completion of the global information 
infrastructure, a series of networks that sends messages and images at 
the speed of light.
    Appropriately, the theme of this year's World Trade Day observance 
is ``Trade, a Worldwide Web of Opportunity.'' Linking

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businesses and customers around the clock, 7 days a week, the Web 
provides even the smallest companies with the opportunity to do business 
on a global scale. We are about to enter a new and unprecedented era in 
world trade, and America's businesses, workers, and consumers are poised 
to embrace this opportunity and continue our leadership of the world 
economy.
    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 laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 16 
through May 22, 1999, as World Trade Week. I invite the people of the 
United States to observe this week with events, trade shows, and 
educational programs that celebrate the benefits of international trade 
to our economy.
    In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this seventeenth day 
of May, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and ninety-nine, and of 
the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and 
twenty-third.
                                            William J. Clinton

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 11:25 a.m., May 18, 
1999]

Note: This proclamation was published in the Federal Register on May 19.