Bill Clinton: “Most of them will be all gone after 5 years. I can't answer that, but I'll get you an answer. If you give me your…”

“Most of them will be all gone after 5 years. I can't answer that, but I'll get you an answer. If you give me your address, I'll sent you a specific answer to it. Let me tell you, this was a part of the negotiation, but some of the particularly sensitive items that were clearly felt by one side or the other to need a longer period of time to get to where they could fully compete were given more time. There are a few things where the phaseout goes all the way to 7 years or 10 years. But by and large, there are substantial reductions in the tariffs immediately, and almost all the reductions occur within the first 3 years. And let me just back up and say, while the products that we've mentioned here, and I think all the products that are produced by any of these folks at these five companies that could be sold into Mexico, have a 20 percent tariff, some Mexican products are less. And the average Mexican tariff is just a little over 10 percent. But a lot of the stuff where we've got real hot opportunities, that's a 20 percent tariff. So that's why I've been so interested in them. Our average tariff on their products is 4 percent. Where there is a longer phaseout period, it's normally because we have something called a nontariff barrier, that is, an absolute limit on how much can come in. That's normally on textiles and apparel. So there's a longer period of phaseout there to make sure that there's more of an opportunity to adjust to whatever the competitive developments are, so that we don't just throw cold water on them. I wish I could stay all day. You guys have been great. I hope you will support this. It means more jobs for this country. And also, don't forget, one of the things I want to emphasize again, it didn't come up in the questions. When I was at the United Nations a few weeks ago, I had a reception for the leaders of all the other Latin American countries who were there. And I can tell you that Argentina and Chile and Venezuela and Colombia and Bolivia and a lot of other countries that are struggling to maintain democracy want to open up markets with us, and they want to buy our products. Tiny Colombia, in the last 2 years, has increased their purchase of American products by 69 to 64 percent a year. This is a big deal. But if we don't do NAFTA, they'll wonder whether we're really serious about embracing all of Latin America. Again, I say I hope you will support it. I do believe that it will give us in the short term a competitive advantage over the Europeans and the Japanese. But the most important thing is it will pressure them to adopt a new worldwide trade agreement. American workers are now the most productive in the world. You've got to believe in yourselves. We can do this. We can compete. We can win if we have access to the markets. That's what this gives us. Thank you very much. We need your help.”