pd07de98 Statement on the Resignation of Steve Grossman as National Chairman of...

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    At the outset of the next phase of the peace process, we must 
candidly acknowledge that we have to change these circumstances. No 
peace stands a chance of lasting if it does not deliver real results to 
ordinary people. Our challenge today, therefore, is to do more

[[Page 2389]]

to deliver these results and to do it sooner rather than later.
    I would like to make just a few more points before I let you move on 
to the business at hand. First, peace is built on compromise, and with 
any compromise, it is important to address the genuine needs of both 
parties. Both sides have made sacrifices to get where we are, including 
at the recent Wye summit. Both have taken steps since then to keep the 
process moving forward.
    There have been bumps in the road, to be sure, but the agreement is 
on track, and we must keep it on track. By our words and our actions, we 
must keep lending our support, anticipating problems before they arise, 
encouraging the parties to uphold their commitments, building confidence 
in both the Palestinian and Israeli people through sustained external 
support. These will be my goals when I visit the region in 2 weeks.
    Second, we must persuade private organizations and individuals to 
join governments in deepening investments in the region. While public 
assistance can jump-start development, ultimately the private sector 
holds the key. There must be greater investment of private resources in 
Gaza and the West Bank. Each vote of confidence makes the infrastructure 
a little stronger. Each investment makes previous investments more 
likely to succeed. It is good economic policy, and it's the right thing 
to do.
    Third, I am convinced for this peace to be real and lasting, it must 
be regional. Trade and investment must flourish throughout the Middle 
East, between the Arab world and Palestinians and also between the Arab 
world and Israelis. There can be no road different from this that leads 
to a just and lasting peace.
    Many nations here have contributed significant resources already, 
including Norway, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the nations of the EU, and 
others. We saw a concrete result last week with the opening of the new 
airport in Gaza, built with international assistance, a powerful symbol 
of the Palestinian people's connection to the rest of the world.
    Institutions like the World Bank are helping, too, ensuring that 
donor pledges are matched with broad development strategies. The United 
States has been proud to support these efforts and will continue to do 
so. The Middle East is profoundly important to our country, for all our 
citizens who love peace, stability, and the kindness of neighbor-to-
neighbor, virtues that can be found in every faith that trace their 
roots to the Holy Land.
    Today I want to announce that I intend to work closely with our 
Congress on developing a package to provide an additional $400 million 
to assist the Palestinian people, funds to help create jobs, improve 
basic education, enhance access to water, support the rule of law. This 
amount is in addition to the regular annual contribution provided by the 
United States, which will reach $100 million next year.
    A great deal remains to be done, but I urge you to remember how much 
can be accomplished in just a year. At the beginning of 1998, Northern 
Ireland was dominated by its divisions, how they were drawn, and who was 
on what side. Today, the most important dividing line is whether one 
believes in the past or the future. Through courageous decisions and a 
steady tide of investment, the people there are seeing peace grow from 
wish to fulfillment. Prosperity there, too, is the key to making it 
happen.
    A breakthrough occurred at the Wye summit because the parties 
decided to look forward, not backward, to focus on the need for security 
and on tangible economic benefits like the Gaza airport, the future 
seaport, the safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank, the Gaza 
industrial estate, which may provide employment for up to 20,000 
Palestinians. All these will enable the predictable movement of people 
and goods, crucial to building a healthy investment climate. Every 
economy needs a chance to breathe. These steps will provide good 
breathing room.
    All of you here today know how important your work is. Too many 
lives have already been lost in the Middle East, from prime ministers to 
simple passers-by who became random victims of the burning hatred. Today 
you help again to change this dynamic. Today you know we have the best 
chance for peace there in our lifetimes.
    By building prosperity in Gaza and in the West Bank, by promoting 
regional economic cooperation, by giving young Palestinians a

[[Page 2390]]

chance to channel their dreams into positive opportunities, you lay the 
groundwork for a peace that will last not for a year or a lifetime, but 
for generations to come. We are honored to have you in the United 
States, and we wish you well in this important endeavor.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 10:48 a.m. in the Loy Henderson Conference 
Room at the State Department. In his remarks, he referred to Chairman 
Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority.


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[Page 2390-2392]
 
Monday, December 7, 1998
 
Volume 34--Number 49
Pages 2387-2429
 
Week Ending Friday, December 4, 1998
 
Remarks on Electronic Commerce

November 30, 1998

    Thank you very much. I feel like the fifth wheel here. [Laughter] 
Most of what needs to be said has certainly been said.
    I want to thank the Vice President for his outstanding leadership. I 
thank Secretary Rubin and Ambassador Barshefsky and, in his absence, 
Secretary Daley; Administrator Alvarez, Mr. Podesta, and other members 
of the administration. I thank all the members of the high-tech 
community in various forms and permutations who are here in this 
audience today.
    And I, too, want to thank the Members of Congress for their 
invaluable help. In spite of the ups and downs of partisan debate in 
Washington, this is one area where we've managed to really pull together 
a broad bipartisan coalition of Members of Congress to do a whole series 
of good things for America, through the Internet, over the long run.
    I want to specifically thank Congressman Cox and Senator Wyden for 
sponsoring the Internet Tax Freedom Act. I want to thank Senator Hatch, 
who led the efforts on the copyright protection legislation. I thank 
Senator Burns, the cochair of the Internet caucus and who, along with 
Senators Rockefeller and Dorgan, who are here, have played crucial roles 
on the Senate Commerce Committee in passing electronic commerce 
legislation; and Congressman Pickering, who has assisted us in the 
privatization of the domain name system and on many other issues. So I'd 
like to ask you to give these Members of Congress a round of applause. I 
thank them for what they are doing. [Applause]
    I'm very grateful to John Chambers and Meg Whitman for being here 
today and for what they do with their own companies and what they 
represent for our country's future. I've been wondering what I was going 
to do in a couple years. I think I could be a successful trader on eBay, 
you know? [Laughter] At least I know where I can go and get my political 
memorabilia now. [Laughter]
     I always liked John Chambers until I found out he had 70 vice 
presidents. [Laughter] I don't know what to make of that. He's more 
important than I am? He's less efficient than I am? [Laughter] Or one 
great Vice President is enough. How's that? [Laughter]
    I also want to thank my friend of 30 years now, Ira Magaziner, who 
has been acknowledged, and who's here with his wonderful family, for 
years of work, including many months when this work did not get anything 
like this level of attention which it has today.
    As all of you know, Thanksgiving weekend marked the beginning of the 
holiday shopping center and a new holiday tradition. Last year only 10 
percent of those with home computers shopped for holiday gifts on-line; 
this year the figure is predicted to be over 40 percent. On-line 
shoppers are buying everything from the latest electronics to old-time 
Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig baseball cards, thanks to eBay. This new era, 
therefore, will not only transform commerce, it will lift America's 
economy in the 21st century.
    This Thanksgiving I had a chance again to give thanks for these good 
times in our country. Less than a decade ago, people were worrying that 
America could not keep up with global competition. Today, we have the 
strongest economy in a generation, about 17 million new jobs, the 
largest real wage growth in 20 years, the lowest unemployment in 28 
years, the smallest percentage of people on welfare in 29 years. And 
we're leading the world in the technologies of the future, from 
telecommunications to biotechnology.
    The qualities rewarded in this new economy, flexibility, innovation, 
creativity, enterprise, are qualities that have long been associated 
with Americans and our economy. We have to keep this momentum going. 
That's really what we're here to celebrate, ratify, and commit ourselves 
to today.

[[Page 2391]]

    I think the first thing we have to do is to stay with the economic 
policies that have worked for the last 6 years: fiscal discipline, 
expanding trade, investing in education and research and development. I 
think we have to do more work here at home to expand the benefits of the 
economic recovery to areas and people who have not yet felt it, and I 
believe the Internet has an enormous potential role to play there.
    I believe, to keep this going, we're going to have to do more to 
contain the economic crisis in the world, to reverse it in Asia, and to 
deal with the long-term challenges to global financial markets, which 
Secretary Rubin and I and others are working very hard on.
    But finally, I think we have to clearly commit ourselves to making 
the most of what is clearly the engine of tomorrow's economy: 
technology. We have to make ourselves absolutely committed to the 
proposition that we will first do no harm. We will do nothing that 
undermines the capacity of emerging technologies to lift the lives of 
ordinary Americans and, secondly, that, insofar as we can, we will help 
to create an environment which will enhance the likelihood of success. 
That is what we are fundamentally celebrating today and committing 
ourselves to for tomorrow.
    Information technology now accounts for more than a third of our 
economic growth. It has boosted our productivity and reduced inflation 
by a full percentage point. Obviously, few applications of this 
technology have more power than electronic commerce. If all the sales 
being conducted over the Internet were taking place at one shopping 
mall, that mall would have to be 30 times the size of the largest mall 
in the world, Minnesota's Mall of America. Five years from now we would 
need a facility 1,000 times the size of the Mall of America to handle 
the volume of sales.
    Now, to fulfill this promise, we have to create the conditions for 
electronic entrepreneurs. You've heard that discussed. That's why I 
asked the Vice President to coordinate, and Ira Magaziner to work on 
building a framework for global economic commerce back in late 1995. 
That's why we committed ourselves to the proposition that the Internet 
should be a free-trade zone with incentives for competition, protection 
for consumers and children, supervised not by governments but by people 
who use the Internet every day.
    This year 132 nations followed the U.S. lead by signing a 
declaration to refrain from imposing customs duties on electronic 
commerce. We reached agreements supporting our market-driven approach 
with the European Union, Japan, and other nations. Today the Australian 
Prime Minister and I will issue a joint statement along these same 
lines. Working with Congress, industry, State and local officials, we 
passed a law to put a 3-year moratorium on new and discriminatory taxes 
on electronic commerce. And again, I thank Secretary Rubin and Deputy 
Secretary Summers for their work on that.
    We ratified an international treaty to protect intellectual property 
on-line. We made it possible to conduct official transactions 
electronically. We secured the funds to challenge the Nation's research 
community to develop the next generation Internet. We passed a law to 
protect the privacy of our children on-line. We're working with 
companies representing a large share of the Internet traffic to help 
them meet our privacy guidelines. We have effectively privatized the 
Internet's domain name and routing systems. We have moved to improve the 
security and reliability of cyberspace by focusing attention on 
protecting critical infrastructures and solving the Y2K computer 
problem.
    Now, that's a pretty impressive line of work for all concerned. But 
we see there are still challenges to overcome. Many people who surf the 
Web still don't shop there. They worry they won't get what they thought 
they were paying for. They'll have nowhere to go if they get cheated. 
We've already begun to address these fears, not with burdensome 
regulations that might stifle growth and innovation but with incentives 
for on-line companies to offer customers the protections they need.
    We must do more. Our country has some of the strongest consumer 
protections in the world. Today I ask Secretary Daley to work with the 
FTC and other agencies, consumer advocates, industry, and our trading 
partners to develop new approaches to extend the proud tradition of 
consumer protection into

[[Page 2392]]

cyberspace, to ensure truthful advertising and full disclosure of 
information are the foundations of global electronic commerce. People 
should get what they pay for on-line; it should be easy to get redress 
if they don't.
    We must give consumers the same protection in our virtual mall they 
now get at the shopping mall. And if the virtual mall is to grow, we 
must help small businesses and families gain access to the same services 
at the same speed that big business enjoys.
    For many people, connections are so slow that shopping at the 
virtual mall is filled with frustration. It is as if they had to drive 
over dirt roads to get to the mall, only to find an endless line of 
customers just waiting to get into the door. So today I'll also direct 
Secretary Daley and Ambassador Barshefsky to work with the FCC and our 
trading partners to promote greater competition to bring advanced high-
speed connections into our homes and small businesses, to ensure that 
the Internet continues to evolve in ways that will benefit all our 
people.
    Our Nation was founded at the dawn of a period not so very unlike 
this one, a period of enormous economic upheaval when the world was 
beginning to move from an agrarian to an industrial economy. Alexander 
Hamilton, our first Secretary of the Treasury, understood these changes 
well. In his remarkable ``Report on Manufacturers'' and other of his 
writings, Hamilton identified new ways to harness the changes then going 
on so that our Nation could advance.
    Listen to this. He proposed what many thought were radical ideas at 
the time: a central bank, a common currency, a national system of roads 
and canals, a crackdown on fraud so that American products would be 
known all over the world for quality. He created the blueprint that made 
possible America's industrial age and, many of us believe, the 
preservation of the American Union.
    Today, we are drawing up the blueprints for a new economic age, not 
for starting big institutions but for freeing small entrepreneurs. We 
have the honor of designing the architecture for a global economic 
marketplace, with stable laws, strong protections for consumers, serious 
incentives for competition, a marketplace to include all people and all 
nations.
    Now, I may not know as much about cable modems and T-1 lines as the 
Vice President--[laughter]--I think we made a living of jokes out of 
that for 6 years. But I do know, thanks to his and others' work, that 
electronic commerce gives us an extraordinary opportunity to usher in 
the greatest age of prosperity not only Americans but people all over 
the world have ever known.
    To me, the most moving thing said from this podium today involved 
the stories of people in Africa and Latin America lifting themselves 
from abject poverty through access to the Internet. That can happen to 
more than a billion other people in ways that benefit all of us, if we 
do this right.
    We have made a good beginning. I am confident we will finish the 
job.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 12:02 p.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to John Chambers, chief 
executive officer, Cisco Systems; Meg Whitman, chief executive officer, 
eBay; and Prime Minister John Howard of Australia. The transcript made 
available by the Office of the Press Secretary also included the remarks 
of Vice President Al Gore.


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