[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 38, Number 14 (Monday, April 8, 2002)]
[Pages 563-567]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on Trade Promotion Authority Legislation and Extension of the 
Andean Trade Preference Act

April 4, 2002

    Well, thank you, Mr. Secretary. I'm glad I caught you before you 
packed your bags. [Laughter] This morning I sent the Secretary on a very 
important mission, a mission of peace. And there's no doubt I sent a 
great man to go accomplish that mission. I'm proud of your service to 
our country, Colin, and thank you for inviting us to this beautiful 
hall.
    I want to thank you all for coming as well. I appreciate so very 
much the opportunity to talk about the values and interests of America 
and the fact that open trade is in our Nation's interest. And open trade 
helps us all adhere to values that we share, common values, values that 
call for respect of human rights and values that believe in the worth of 
each individual and values that hold democracy and freedom dear. I 
believe strongly in trade. I believe not only is trade in my Nation's 
interests; I think trade is in the interest of those nations who 
struggle with poverty, that desire a route out of poverty.
    As Colin mentioned, I was in Monterrey, Mexico, recently--we were in 
Monterrey, Mexico. I said there in Monterrey, this country of ours will 
provide aid--we're pleased to do so and proud to do so--but direct aid 
is small in comparison to the benefits of trade; and that not only would 
we provide direct aid, but in return we expect our friends to adopt the 
habits that will encourage stability and peace and human rights. And 
there's nothing better to encourage those habits than trade.
    And trade is important for American workers too. Lost in the debate 
on trade here at home is the fact that many people are able to find 
better jobs as the result of an active trade policy in the United 
States.
    And so we're here to talk about a way to make sure that our Nation 
trades and our Nation works with other countries in the world to trade. 
In order for that--to do so, the United States Senate must pass trade 
promotion authority. I need that authority. Every day we go by without 
the authority is another day we are missing opportunities to help our 
economy, to help our workers, to help our country, to relate to our 
friends around the world. If the Senate acts to give me trade promotion 
authority--and I expect them to do so--I will use it to expand commerce 
and work for higher paying jobs for American workers.
    And so today I urge the Senate leadership to lead, to act, and to 
get this bill to my desk.
    I want to thank Secretary Don Evans, who's the Secretary of 
Commerce, for being here. He's my close friend. We spent a lot of 
quality time in Midland, Texas, together. He's now representing the 
commercial interests of our country, and I'm proud of the job he does.
    And I want to thank John Walters for being here as well. John is in 
charge of making sure that the United States drug policy not only is 
clear but works. And that drug policy says, we'll work with our 
neighbors to interdict drugs. But in order for a drug policy to be 
effective, all of us in this country must make it clear to our young 
that drugs destroy their hopes and opportunities.
    I want to thank members of the diplomatic corps who are here. 
Particularly, I want to thank the Prime Minister of Peru. Bienvenidos. 
It's nice to see you again, sir. Thank you for coming. I have spent a 
lot of time with members of the ambassadorial corps. I'm a better person 
for it. I see many friendly faces here. I want to thank you all for 
coming to support this initiative.
    See, I hope--I wish Members of the United States Senate were here to 
see the members of the diplomatic corps who've showed up for this. 
They're here because they understand the importance of trade. They're 
here because they understand the benefits of trade to their own people.
    I also want to thank the U.S. exporters who are here, America's 
business leaders, and

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people who understand the benefits of opening up markets. I know that 
many of you have worked hard to help advance trade around the world, and 
for that we're grateful.
    And we've done a lot last year; we really have. As Colin mentioned, 
we helped launch a new global--a round of global trade negotiations in 
Doha. We helped bring China and Taiwan into the World Trade 
Organization, and that's good. That's important, to recognize and to 
welcome both countries, both the Republic of Taiwan and of course China, 
into the World Trade Organization. It's positive; it's a positive 
development for our country.
    We've worked hard to have a free trade agreement with Jordan and 
bilateral trade agreement with Vietnam.
    We reinvigorated trade negotiations of the free trade area of the 
Americas in Quebec City, as Colin pointed out. I thought those were very 
constructive discussions we had with your leaders. It was my chance to--
my first chance to meet them. And it was--an interesting thing about 
that meeting, by the way, is that every country in our hemisphere was 
represented, except one. We welcomed every country into the meeting that 
had democratically elected leadership. One notable absence, I might add, 
Cuba; they don't democratically elect their leader. And the first, most 
important thing we discussed, besides preserving democracy in our 
hemisphere, was trade--how to encourage more free trade. And that was a 
positive development.
    We're also in negotiations now with Chile and Singapore on free 
trade agreements.
    And so we're now making good progress, but we've got to continue the 
momentum. I need the support of Congress on two urgent matters, trade 
promotion authority and the Andean Trade Preference Act. Both are 
awaiting action in the Senate. Both sit waiting for the Senate to act, 
and both are essential to the economy of the United States.
    The trade promotion authority--sometimes Members of Congress and I 
think people don't pay much attention to the issue, don't really 
understand how it works. The trade promotion authority gives the 
executive branch the right to negotiate trade agreements, but Congress 
has the final authority to approve the agreements. It's not by granting 
me TPA that all of a sudden they've dealt themselves out of the mix; 
quite the contrary. If they pass it, they've dealt themselves into the 
mix. They have a chance to ratify, up or down, a treaty.
    But the good thing about TPA is it allows me to negotiate or my 
administration negotiate, and then Congress gets to vote on the terms, 
up or down. And that's important for the nations represented in this 
world. It gives them confidence to negotiate a treaty with the United 
States without it being fine-tuned by numerous experts on the Hill, on 
what is right or wrong about trade.
    It's important to have a platform for trade, and TPA provides that. 
Five Presidents before me, Republicans and Democrats, have had this 
advantage in trade negotiations--five of them. For two decades, trade 
promotion authority was a bipartisan commitment. It wasn't a political 
issue. It was a commitment, because it represented our national interest 
in expanding foreign markets. Those years saw many successes, and during 
the ninties, about one-quarter of our economic growth came as a result 
of exports. Our two major trade agreements, NAFTA and the Uruguay round, 
have improved the average standard of living for Americans.
    As importantly, NAFTA improved the average standard of living for 
Mexico and Canada. You see, the best policy for the United States is to 
hope our own neighborhood is prosperous. A prosperous and vibrant Mexico 
is good for the United States. You want your neighbors to do well. You 
want your neighborhood to be peaceful and prosperous, and NAFTA helped 
do that.
    The other thing that's interesting about trade is, people think 
about trade, and they think, ``Well, trade is only good for big 
companies; only the multinational companies benefit from trade.'' I 
don't believe that's true. I know that since the role of Government is 
to create an environment in which the entrepreneur can flourish and 
realize his or her dreams, that trade opens up opportunities for the 
entrepreneur. And here's one example.
    Excel Holdings is a company based in Leesburg, Virginia. We've got 
the owner here, which I'm about to name him here pretty quick. And I can 
see his wife and

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two--and son and daughter, I might add. Their job--let me just say, last 
year, they signed a $35 million contract with a Mexican distributor. 
Excel's product serves an important purpose, as it can produce up to 
5,000 gallons of purified drinking water each day.
    Today, Excel maintains distributors in 13 countries. The owner, a 
fellow who came to the United States from Egypt, Hisham Fawzi, he's with 
us. Hisham, thank you for coming. Here's a guy who had a dream; he 
wanted to build and own his own company. That's an important part of the 
American experience, owning your own business, coming up with a good 
idea and working hard to see to it that the good idea works. His idea, 
obviously, included markets around the world. In order for his business 
to succeed, he needed trade in more markets.
    There are thousands of entrepreneurs in America who benefit from 
trade. Trade is not just good for mega-corporate America. Trade is very 
good for farmers and ranchers and entrepreneurs, like our guest here 
today. I want to thank you for coming, and thank you for working hard to 
realize the American Dream, and good luck in your business.
    In 8 years since the TPA, the trade promotion authority, expired, we 
have missed a lot of opportunity in America. And it's cost--and when you 
miss opportunity, it tends to affect the average worker in our country.
    More than 150 regional free trade and customs agreements exist 
throughout the world. The European Union is party to 31 of them; Mexico 
is party to 10; the world's largest economy is party to 3. While we've 
been marking time, our competitors have been working, and they've been 
signing agreements. While we have been delaying, they've been trading. 
Listen, I don't fault our trading partners for making progress. As a 
matter of fact, I would expect our trading partners to work hard to make 
progress. But what we need to do is to engage in competition ourselves.
    You see, when Americans--when there's a level playing field, we can 
compete. We're good at it. Fearful people build walls around America. 
Confident people make sure there are no walls. And I am confident. I'm 
confident in America products. I'm confident in American entrepreneurs. 
I'm confident in the American worker. I'm confident in the American 
know-how. I'm confident in America's farmers. I'm confident in America's 
ranchers. And we need to be a trading nation.
    And I'll submit agreements to Congress, when I have this authority, 
that will be in our Nation's best interests. And we'll work hard to make 
sure we have good trade agreements that benefit both America and our 
trading partners. And if Congress doesn't like it, they can turn it 
down, but I need the authority. It's in our country's interest that I 
have the authority.
    And it's also in our interest to bring confidence to countries 
around the world, to realize we're serious about it when we speak--
countries in our own neighborhood. I mean, trade promotion authority 
will help us establish the free trade agreement of the Americas. And 
that's going to be in our country's interests, in our neighborhood's 
interests to do that as well.
    The other thing that's important about trade for our country to 
understand is that people who trade with America benefit. Trade is just 
not a one-way street. It is a positive relationship. It's important for 
Americans to understand that by trade, we help people, and we help poor 
people, and we help people get lifted out of poverty.
    Listen, we're a compassionate nation. There are a lot of people in 
our country who deeply care about Africa and countries in Africa, who 
deeply care about South America and Central America. These are countries 
that are fine countries, work hard, but they're poor countries. And if 
you're concerned about helping people help themselves, we've got to 
trade with the developing world. And the facts are fantastic. The trade 
with the African nations as a result of AGOA has been a billion dollars' 
worth of new commerce. It's the beginning of what we all hope is a 
prosperity, a boom in prosperity in parts of the world that have not 
been prosperous.
    Oh, there's a lot of talk I hear about labor and environmental 
agreements. A prosperous nation is one more likely to take care of its 
workers. And a prosperous nation is one more likely, much more likely, 
to be able to afford the technology necessary to protect the 
environment.

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    And then, of course, trade creates the habits of freedom. If you 
welcome trade into your country, it creates the notion of freedom. It 
gives people, consumers the opportunity to demand product, which is part 
of a free society. It creates an entrepreneurial class, which is a part 
of a free society. And the habits of freedom begin to create the 
expectations of democracy and demands for better democratic 
institutions. Societies that open to commerce across their borders are 
more open to democracy within their borders.
    And for those of us who care about values, believe in values, not 
just American values but universal values that promote human dignity, 
trade is a good way to do that. It's a heck of a lot easier to promote 
human dignity and human rights through trade than it is through 
lectures.
    And it's very important for us to always remember that a--as I 
mentioned earlier, a prosperous neighborhood, a democratic neighborhood, 
and a peaceful neighborhood is in our Nation's interests. As a matter of 
fact, in all due respect to nations from around the world, the best 
foreign policy starts with making sure your own neighborhood is 
prosperous and safe and sound. And I--as Colin mentioned, we have just 
come back--or a while ago came back from a meeting with our friends in 
Central America and our friends in the Andean nations. And we had very 
constructive dialog, but let me tell you what I heard.
    I heard fine, democratically elected leaders who are troubled by the 
fact that the United States Congress cannot yet respond to their simple 
desire to trade, their desire to expand and extend the Andean Trade 
Preference Act. It is important for these nations--and all you've got to 
do is ask the Prime Minister or the Ambassadors from the four countries 
with whom I met--ask them the facts. That's what I ask the Senate to do. 
What does the Andean Trade Preference Act mean to nations that protect 
and defend democracy and, at the same time, fight off narcotraffickers? 
Trade in this instance not only is important for their economies; it is 
important for their security.
    It is important that these nations be given market access so they 
can develop products other than coca, that the workers in their 
countries are not prone to need to work in the narcotics industry. If 
we're serious about dealing with narcotics, not only will we work to 
reduce demand, as John Walters is going to do, but we've got to work in 
a constructive way, in a real way, with the Andean nations. And that 
means not only to work on interdiction, but it means helping these 
nations through trade and develop substitute products--products that can 
be substituted for the quick buck in narcotics.
    I hope Congress understands that. I hope Congress understands that 
the Andean Trade Preference Act is a crucial part of making sure that 
our hemisphere is democratic and free and stable and secure. The United 
States Senate needs to affirm America's trade leadership and bring both 
measures I've talked about today, the trade promotion authority and the 
Andean Trade Preference Act, to the Floor by April 22d.
    Now, I've talked to enough Members of the Senate, as have my staff, 
to know that there's enough Republicans and Democrats to pass both 
bills. And therefore the time of delay is over. By April 22d, I'd like 
to see the debate and get them passed. These bills are good for America; 
these bills are good for our friends. The time of delay must end.
    And by approving these measures, and other measures such as the 
Generalized System of Preferences and an enhanced African trade bill, we 
will stand squarely with our friends in the world, recognizing that when 
we work together and when we trade together, the whole world can be more 
prosperous. We've got to seize the moment.
    As you know, we fight off incredible terror. And we will. You don't 
have to worry about this administration. We're determined, and we're 
going to win against terror. And we've also got to fight off poverty and 
despair and hopelessness, and one way to do that is to encourage trade.
    I want to thank you all for giving me a chance to come and share my 
thoughts. May God bless not only America but all the nations of the 
world.

Note: The President spoke at 1:15 p.m. in the Benjamin Franklin Room at 
the Department of State. In his remarks, he referred to Prime Minister 
Roberto Danino of Peru; and Sherri Fawzi,

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wife of Hisham Fawzi, and their children, Kareem and Sarah.