Industries--and I believe this is most vital--industries will move their plants and jobs and capital inside the walls of the Common Market, and jobs, therefore, will be lost here in the United States if they cannot otherwise compete for…
John F. Kennedy
The Public Record
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, also known as JFK, was the 35th president of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. He was the youngest person elected president, at 43 years, and the first Catholic president. Kennedy served at the height of the Cold War, and the majority of his foreign policy concerned relations with the Soviet Union and Cuba. A member of the Democratic Party, Kennedy represented Massachusetts in both houses of the United States Congress before his presidency.
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If, on the other hand, we hang back in deference to local economic pressures, we will find ourselves cut off from our major allies.
And we will have forged across the Atlantic a trading partnership with vast resources for freedom.
If we move decisively, our factories and farms can increase their sales to their richest, fastest-growing market.
Our decision could well affect the unity of the West, the course of the Cold War, and the economic growth of our Nation for a generation to come.
We need a new law--a wholly new approach--a bold new instrument of American trade policy.
Will we in this country adapt our thinking to these new prospects and patterns--or will we wait until events have passed us by?
Assuming the accession of the United Kingdom, there will arise across the Atlantic a trading partner behind a single external tariff similar to ours with an economy which nearly equals our own.
Above all, if we are to pay for our commitments abroad, we must expand our exports.
It is not free societies which bear within them the seeds of inevitable disunity.
Thus, we in the free world are moving steadily toward unity and cooperation, in the teeth of that old Bolshevik prophecy, and at the very time when extraordinary rumbles of discord can be heard across the Iron Curtain.
The Atlantic Community grows, not like a volcanic mountain, by one mighty explosion, but like a coral reef, from the accumulating activity of all.