pd07fe00 Videotape Address to the People of Puerto Rico on Efforts To Resolve the...

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education.
    But the openness and mobility, the flexible networking and 
sophisticated communications technologies that have made globalization 
what it is--so totally consuming--all these factors have also made us 
more vulnerable to some of our oldest 
problems.
    Terrorism, narcotraffickers, and organized criminals, they can use 
all this new technology, too, and take advantage of the openness of 
societies and borders. They present all of us with new security 
challenges in the new century. The spread of disease; ethnic, racial, 
tribal, religious conflicts, rooted in the fear of others who are 
different--they seem to find ways to spread in this globalized era. And 
the grinding poverty of more than a billion people who live on less than 
a dollar a day and live for a year on less than what it costs to stay in 
a nice hotel at night--they, too, are part of the globalized world. A 
few of us live on the cutting edge of the new economy; too many of us 
live on the bare edge of survival, without the means to move up.
    Those who wish to roll back the forces of globalization because they 
fear its disruptive consequences, I believe, are plainly wrong. Fifty 
years of experience shows that greater economic integration and 
political cooperation are positive forces. Those who believe 
globalizaton is only about market economics, however, are wrong, too.
    All these new networks must lead to new arrangements that work for 
all, that work to spur growth, lift lives, raise standards, both around 
the world and within nations.
    Now, leaders from business, government, and civil society, 
therefore, must come together to build a future that can unite not 
divide us. We must recognize, first, that globalization has made us all 
more free and more interdependent. Those of us who are more fortunate 
must be more responsible and work harder to be good neighbors and good 
partners. The United States has a special responsibility in that regard, 
because we have been so fortunate in our history and so very fortunate 
over the last decade.
    I came here today in the hope that by working together we can 
actually find a way to create the conditions and provide the tools to 
give people on every continent the ability to solve their own problems, 
and in so doing, to strengthen their own lives and our global economy in 
the new century.

[[Page 187]]

    I would like to make just a few points. First, I think we have got 
to reaffirm unambiguously that open markets and rules-based trade are 
the best engine we know of to lift living standards, reduce 
environmental destruction, and build shared prosperity. This is true 
whether you're in Detroit, Davos, Dacca, or Dakar. Worldwide, open 
markets do create jobs. They do raise incomes. They do spark innovation 
and spread new technology. They do--coupled with the explosion of 
international communications through the Internet, which is the fastest-
growing network in history.
    For example, when I became President 7 years ago, there were only 50 
pages on the World Wide Web. Today, there are over 50 million--in 7 
years. Trade broadens the frontiers of possibility for all of those who 
have access to its benefits and the tools to claim them.
    As I said a couple of days ago in my State of the Union Address, for 
me there is only one direction forward on trade, and that is to go on 
with what we're doing, recognizing that this is a new and very different 
world, that the idea that we would be better off with less trade, with 
less rule-based trade by turning away from our attempts to find 
international ways within which we can work together, I think is dead 
wrong.
    Now, having said that, what does that mean? Well, for me, it meant 
that when, first our neighbors in Mexico and then our friends in Asia 
were in turmoil and crisis, the United States had to keep our markets 
open, even though it led to record trade deficits. For me, it means it's 
very important to get China into the World Trade Organization, to ensure 
that China's markets are open to us--even as we have our markets open to 
China--and to advance peace and stability in Asia and increase the 
possibility of positive change in China.
    The changes in our markets are only beginning. You know, people have 
been trading goods across borders as long as there have been borders. 
But communications technology and the Internet are expanding trade in 
unprecedented ways--many of you understand better than I. Today, 
everything from data processing to security monitoring to stockbrokering 
and advanced degrees can be bought and sold all over the world. E-
commerce creates enormous potential for growth anywhere, and it will 
continue to do so if we can resist the temptation to put up barriers to 
this important part of our new 
economy.
    Trade is especially important, of course, for developing nations. 
Listen to this--this is something that I think people from the 
developing nations who oppose the WTO should think about--from the 
1970's to the early nineties, developing countries that chose growth 
through trade grew at least twice as fast as those who chose not to open 
to the world. The most open countries had growth that was 6 times as 
fast.
    Think about what Japan or the nations of southeastern Europe were 
like 50 years ago. They were poor, largely rural societies. Today, they 
are prosperous global leaders, in no small measure because of trade. 
Look at South Korea, Mexico, or Thailand, which built their growth on 
openness. Even after the recent traumas of financial crises, their 
national incomes are still more than double the 1970 levels, when they 
were more closed. And their gains in literacy, education, and life 
expectancy are truly extraordinary, far outpacing countries that chose 
not to open to the world.
    Certainly, many of the people who have questioned the wisdom of open 
trade are genuinely concerned about the fate of the poor and the 
disadvantaged, and well they should be. But they should ask themselves, 
what will happen to a Bangladeshi textile worker or a migrant from the 
Mexican countryside without the prospect of jobs and industry that can 
sell to foreign, as well as domestic, consumers? What happens to farmers 
in Uruguay or Zimbabwe, in Australia, Europe, the United States, if 
protectionism makes it impossible to market products beyond their 
borders? How can working conditions be improved and poverty be reduced 
in developing countries if they are denied these and other opportunities 
to grow, the things that come with participation in the world economy? 
No, trade must not be a race to the bottom, whether we're talking about 
child labor, basic working conditions, or environmental protection. But 
turning away from

[[Page 188]]

trade would keep part of our global community forever on the bottom. 
That is not the right response.
    Now, that means, it seems to me, that we must face another 
challenge. The second point I want to make is that developing countries 
will only reap the benefits of integration in the world economy if the 
industrialized countries are able to garner enough domestic support for 
policies that are often controversial at home. It is easier for us to 
gather here, in vigorous agreement--and I'm glad you brought Mr. Sweeney 
over so we could have an occasional voice of occasional disagreement.
    But most of us here agree with everything I just said. Why? Well, we 
have seen and personally felt the benefits of globalization. But 
convincing our publics to go along, to go for greater integration in a 
rule-based system which might require them to change further, and might 
require some of them, unlike most of us, to change what they do for a 
living, remain a challenge.
    How shall we meet it? In the United States, we must overcome 
resistance to our groundbreaking trade agreements with Africa and the 
Caribbean Basin; even though, if they both pass, their impact on our 
economy will be very small, while their impact on the African nations 
that participate and those in the Caribbean will be very large, indeed. 
I am determined to pass both measures this year, and I think we'll 
succeed, but it's an indication of what kinds of problems every country 
faces.
    Indeed, you probably have noted this, but one of the most ironic, 
and to me, disappointing consequences of our unprecedented prosperity, 
which has given us over 20 million new jobs in my country in the last 7 
years, is that it seems to me that protectionist sentiment or antitrade 
sentiment, at least, is greater now than it was 7 years ago when I took 
office, in the United States Congress. I want to talk a little about 
that today and how it relates to what's going on in other countries. But 
we all have an obligation to work through that nation by nation.
    Part of what countries have to do is to be able to point to what 
other countries are doing and to say, well, look what they're doing; we 
ought to do this. We ought to do our part. That means we are 
significantly affected in the United States by the policies of Europe, 
Japan, and other wealthier countries. I think for its part, Europe 
should put its agricultural subsidies on the table. If even one-third of 
the world's subsidies and tariffs in agriculture were eliminated, the 
poorest developing countries that could export would gain more than $4 
billion in economic benefits every single year.
    We can also, I must say, do better in the developed countries if we 
are able to make a more forceful case for the value of imports. None of 
us do this enough, and I must say, I haven't done this enough. We all go 
around talking about--every time we talk about trade agreements in our 
countries, we always talk about how many jobs will be created at home 
because we're opening markets abroad. And we make ourselves vulnerable 
to people who say, ``But it may not reduce the trade deficit, and look 
how big it is.''
    So I just want to say, I wish everyone here would look at yourselves 
and ask yourselves if you are wearing anything made in a country other 
than the country where you live.
    There are benefits to imports. We don't just do a favor to 
developing countries or to our trading partners in developed countries 
when we import products and services from them. We benefit from those 
products. Imports stretch family budgets; they promote the well-being of 
working families by making their dollars go further; they bring new 
technology and ideas; they, by opening markets, dampen inflation and 
spur innovation.
    In a few days, we will have the longest economic expansion in the 
history of the United States. I am convinced one of the reasons that it 
will happen is that we have kept our markets open, even in tough times, 
so that there has always been pressure to keep inflation down as we 
continue to generate jobs and growth. I am convinced of it. And those of 
us in wealthier countries need to make the case that even when we have 
trade deficits, if we're growing jobs and we're gaining ground and the 
jobs are growing in areas that pay better wages, we are getting the 
benefits of imports. I think all people in public life have been 
insufficiently willing to say that. And we must do more.

[[Page 189]]

    The third point I would like to make is that we simply cannot expect 
trade alone to carry the burden of lifting nations out of poverty. It 
will not happen. Trade is essential to growth in developing countries, 
but it is not sufficient for growth in developing countries. Sustained 
growth requires investment in human capital, education, health care, 
technology, infrastructure. Particularly in an economy that runs more 
and more on brainpower, no investment pays off faster than education. 
The international community has set 2015 as a target for giving every 
child access to basic education. I'm asking our Congress for more 
funding to help nations get more children out of work and into school. I 
hope others in the public and private sectors will join us.
    Each year in the developing world, we see millions of lives lost and 
billions of dollars lost--dollars that could be spent in many more 
productive ways to killer diseases like AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. 
Last year in Africa, AIDS killed more people--10 times more--than all 
the wars did. We have the technology to find vaccines for those 
diseases. We have medications that can lengthen and improve the quality 
of life.
    But let's face a fact. The pharmaceutical industry has no incentive 
to develop products for customers who are too poor to buy them. I have 
proposed a tax credit to say to our private industry, if you will 
develop these vaccines, we'll help to pay for them. I hope the World 
Bank, other nations, and the corporate world will help us in meeting 
this challenge. If we could get the vaccines out to the people who need 
them in time, we could save millions and millions of lives and free up 
billions of dollars to be invested in building those lives, those 
societies, into strong, productive partners--not just for trade but for 
peace.
    We can also help countries help themselves by lifting their 
crippling burden of debt, so they'll have more to invest in their people 
and their future. The Cologne debt initiative commits us to reducing the 
foreign debt of the world's poorest and most indebted nations by as much 
as 70 percent. Last fall I pledged that the United States would forgive 
100 percent of the debts those countries owe to us. This year I will 
work to fund our share of the multilateral debt relief. I am pleased 
that so many others have made similar pledges, and look forward to the 
first countries benefiting from this initiative very soon. If we keep 
working on this, expanding it, and we all pay our fair share, we can 
turn a vicious cycle of debt and poverty into a virtuous cycle of 
development and trade.
    The last point I'd like to make on this is that I think the 
developed countries who want an open trading system that has the trust 
and confidence of developing countries should also contribute to 
indigenous trade, which may not be directly related--excuse me, 
indigenous economic development, which may not be directly related to 
trade. Just for example, the United States Agency for International 
Development each year funds about 2 million microenterprise loans in 
poor communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
    I will never forget going to small villages in Senegal and Uganda 
and seeing people who had gotten their first business loan--sometimes as 
small as $50--show me their businesses, show me the people they were 
doing business with in their villages, who had also gotten such loans. 
I'll never forget the man in Senegal who was this designated village 
accountant, making me wait outside his front door while he went into his 
house to bring me back all of the accounts he had carefully kept for the 
last month, to prove that the money we were investing was being spent 
wisely.
    Does this have any direct impact on international trade? Of course 
not. Did it make that society stronger? Did it make the economy 
stronger? Did it increase the stability and long-term prospects of the 
nation? Of course it did. So I believe we should all be thinking about 
what more we can do on the indigenous economic development issues.
    The President of Colombia is here. I've asked the Congress to pass a 
very ambitious program to try to help Colombia deal with the 
narcotraffickers and the guerrillas and all the problems that he faces--
perhaps the oldest democracy in Latin America. But one part of it is for 
economic development. It is one thing to tell people they should stop 
growing crops that can be turned into drugs that can

[[Page 190]]

kill our children, and quite another to tell people, if you do this, by 
the way, here's a way to support your children.
    And so I think that we can never lose sight of the fact that if we 
want to build an integrated economy with more and more trade, we have to 
build an economy from the grassroots up in places that want to have a 
balanced, stable society.
    The fourth point I would make is that developed and developing 
countries alike must ensure that the benefits of trade flow widely to 
workers and families within our nations. Industrialized nations must see 
that the poor and those hard hit by changes are not left behind. And all 
nations need to ensure that workers have access to lifelong learning 
benefits, they can move between jobs without being unemployed for too 
long and without having their standard of living dropped.
    We have to work with corporate leaders to spur investment also in 
the people and places that have been left behind. We have to find the 
new markets within our own Nation. For example, I will tell you 
something that might surprise many of you. The national unemployment 
rate in the United States is 4.1 percent. On many of our Native American 
Indian reservations, the unemployment rate is about 70 percent. In 
isolated rural areas in America, the unemployment rate is sometimes 2, 
3, 4 times as high as the national average. So we have not figured out 
how to solve this. When you have these eyesores in a country, when the 
development is not even, they can easily become the symbol with which 
those who do not want us to open our markets more and build a more 
integrated world can use to defeat our larger designs, even if they're 
right.
    And as I said to the American people in Congress a couple of nights 
ago, we in the United States, I think, have a terrifically heavy 
responsibility to reach out to our poor communities, because we've never 
had an expansion this long; and if we can't help our people now, we will 
never get around to it. I am convinced that even though this has nothing 
directly to do with trade, if we succeed, we will build more support for 
a more integrated, global economy.
    Leaders of developing nations have their responsibilities as well, 
to narrow the gap between rich and poor by ensuring that government 
institutions are open and accountable, honest and effective, so they can 
get foreign investment, have widely-shared growth, uproot corruption, 
and solve social problems. There is a limit to what wealthy nations can 
do for people who will not take the necessary steps to make their own 
societies work. Even in this heyday of global free enterprise, many 
people suffer not because their governments are too strong but because 
their governments are too weak.
    Fifth, since globalization is about more than economics, our 
interdependence requires us to find ways to meet the challenges of 
advancing our values without promoting protectionism or undermining open 
trade. I know that the words ``labor and environment'' are heard with 

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