Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much. Mr. President, thank you for that introduction, I foolishly came out here without my earphones, so…”

“Thank you very much. Mr. President, thank you for that introduction, I foolishly came out here without my earphones, so I don't know what he said to make you laugh--[laughter]--or what he said about Robert Kennedy. So I should give a speech about how we need to train more Americans to speak good Japanese. Perhaps someday an American President will come here and give a speech to you in your native language. Then I will know we are really making progress in reaching across the barriers that divide us. It is a great pleasure for me and for the First Lady to be here at this distinguished university today. Waseda is a center of true academic excellence and a training ground for many of Japan's most distinguished leaders. I am proud to be the first American President to visit here. But as has already been said, 31 years ago another American, whom I admired very much, Robert Kennedy, spoke in this hall. It was a very different time. The modern economies of Japan and Asia were just emerging. It was the middle of the cold war. Fierce arguments raged here, as in other nations, about where the future lay, with communism or democracy, with socialism or capitalism. On that evening in 1962, those arguments spilled onto this stage. When members of the student Communist movement heckled Robert Kennedy, he challenged their leader to come up and join him. In his characteristic way, Kennedy transformed a diatribe into a dialog and close-mindedness into an open debate. That is what I hope we will have here today. The exchange that followed was heated, but it demonstrated the best of the values of freedom and democracy that our two nations share. Three decades later, on this day, in this place, the times are very different, but no less challenging. The need for vigorous and open dialog remains. The time has come for America to join with Japan and others in this region to create a new Pacific community. And this, to be sure, will require both of our nations to lead and both of our nations to change. The new Pacific community will rest on a revived partnership between the United States and Japan, on progress toward more open economies and greater trade, and on support for democracy. Our community must also rest on the firm and continuing commitment of the United States to maintain its treaty alliances and its forward military presence in Japan and Korea and throughout this region. Is it appropriate? I believe it is, to address these issues here in Japan. The post-cold-war relationship between our two nations is one of the great success stories of the latter half of the 20th century. We have built a vital friendship. We continue to anchor this region's security and to fuel its development. Japan is an increasingly important global partner in peacekeeping, in promoting democracy, in protecting the environment, in addressing major challenges in this region and throughout the world. Because our relationship has been built on enduring common interests and genuine friendship, it has transcended particular leaders in each country, and it will continue to do so. History has decided the debate that waged here in 1962, a debate over whether communism works. It didn't. Its ruins litter the world stage. Our two nations have proved that capitalism works, that democracy works, that freedom works. Still, no system is perfect. New problems and challenges constantly arise. Old problems deeply rooted in cultures and prejudices remain. To make the most of this new world, we both must change. As Robert Kennedy once noted, ``Progress is a nice word, but its motivator is change, and change has its enemies.'' The cold war passed from the world stage as the global flow of information pierced the Iron Curtain with news of other ways of living. And the world moved steadily toward a more integrated global economy. Money, management, and technology are increasingly mobile today. Trillions of dollars in capital traverse the globe every day. In one generation international trade has nearly tripled as a percentage of global output. In the late 1980's, increased trade accounted for well over half of the new jobs in the United States. Meanwhile there have been huge changes in the organization and the nature of work itself. We are moving away from an economy based on standardized mass production to one dominated by an explosion of customized production and services. The volume of information is increasing at an astonishing rate. Change has become the only constant of life. And only firms that are flexible and innovative, with very well-trained people, are doing very well. The new global economy requires little explanation here in Japan. You have pioneered the modernization of Asia. Now from Taipei to Seoul, from Bangkok to Shanghai, Asian economies are growing at dramatic rates, providing jobs and incomes, providing consumer goods and services to people who could not have even dreamed of them just a generation ago. To be sure, Asia's progress is uneven. There are still millions in abject poverty. Four of the world's last five Communist regimes and other repressive regimes continue to defy the clear laws of human nature and the future. But the scenes of life in this region paint an unmistakable picture of change and vitality and opportunity and growth. A generation ago in Singapore, bumboats floated up to the boat quay to unload their cargoes of produce and cloth which were sent out into a labyrinth of smoky shophouses and small family markets. Today such scenes are joined by those of container ships steaming into Singapore's modern port, one every 6 minutes, disgorging their goods into mechanized warehouses and modern supermarkets. In China's Guangdong Province, young entrepreneurs are leaving safe jobs in state-owned enterprises to start their own companies. To describe their daring spirit the Chinese have coined a phrase that literally means ``to plunge into the sea.'' Such images help to explain why Asia likely will remain the world's fastest growing region for some time. Its imports will exceed 2 trillion U.S. dollars. This growth will help to make a tripolar world driven by the Americans, by Europe, and by Asia. In years past, frankly, some Americans viewed Asia's vibrancy and particularly Japan's success as a threat. I see it very differently. I believe the Pacific region can and will be a vast source of jobs, of income, of partnerships, of ideas, of growth for our own people in the United States, if we have the courage to deal with the problems both of our nations have within and beyond our borders. Already over 40 percent of American trade is with this region. Last year, over 2.3 million American jobs were related to the $120 billion we exported to Asia. Millions of Asian-Americans in the United States today embody our Nation's devotion to family values, to hard work, to education. In so doing, they have helped to strengthen our cultural ties and our economic ties to this region. Today, our Nation is ready to be a full partner in Asian growth. After years of difficult transition, our private sector is embracing the opportunities and meeting the challenges of the global economy. Productivity is on the rise. Attempts to pierce overseas markets are more intense than ever. Many of our manufacturing service and financial firms are now the high-quality, low-cost producers in their fields. At last, our governmental sector in the United States is also moving in the right direction. After years of being urged by Japan and by other nations to do something about the massive American budget deficit, we are on the brink of doing something about it. After years of being urged to do something about improving our education system and making our manufacturing and other sectors more productive and more competitive, we are doing something about it. We are nearing the adoption of a bold plan to reduce our public deficit by $500 billion over the next 5 years and to increase our investments in education, in technology, and in new jobs for the American people. We are moving to reform our health care system, the world's most expensive, to control costs and provide quality care to all of our people. We are moving to give incentives to the millions of Americans who live in poverty so they will move from poverty into middle class working lives. We too are moving to reform our political system, to reduce the cost of our political campaigns and the influence of lobbyists on our lawmakers. We are moving to face one of our most painful social problems, high rates of crime and violence, with new initiatives to put more police officers on our streets, give better futures to our young people in depressed areas, and keep guns out of the hand of dangerous criminals. But it is not enough for the United States to change within. To increase the jobs, raise the incomes, and improve the quality of life of the American people, we must also change our relationships with our partners and ask them to do the same. Our first international economic priority must be to create a new and stronger partnership between the United States and Japan. Our relationship with Japan is the centerpiece of our policy toward the Pacific community. Our two nations account for nearly 40 percent of the world's output. Neither of us could thrive without the other. Producers in each of our countries are consumers for firms in the other. We are also joined in our efforts to address global economic problems. We work closely in an effort to move toward a new trade agreement. And I hope Japan will join in the initiative I proposed just 2 days ago in San Francisco: a meeting of the senior G-7 economics and labor and education advisers to look into a new problem with the global economy, stubbornly persistent unemployment in the richest nations of the world, even where there is economic growth, rooted in the inability of so many of these nations to create new jobs. The economic relationship we have has always benefited both our nations. Americans buy huge volumes of Japanese products. American companies in Japan employ thousands of your citizens. Joint ventures between Japanese and American enterprises advance the economic and other interests of people in both nations. Japanese companies have opened many manufacturing firms, sales offices, and other facilities in the United States. In the 1980's when my country went on a huge debt binge, massively increasing public and private debt, Japanese purchases of much of that debt helped to keep our economy going and helped to prevent our interest rates from exploding. Still, our economic relationship is not in balance. Unlike our relations with all other wealthy nations, we have a huge and persistent trade deficit with Japan. It usually exceeds $40 billion, with a deficit in manufacturing products in excess of $60 billion in spite of the fact that in recent years our manufacturing productivity has increased very greatly. It is impossible to attribute this trade imbalance solely to unfair Japanese barriers, from governmental policies to a unique distribution system. Indeed, it is in part simply a tribute to Japanese abilities to produce high-quality, competitively priced goods and to the skill of Japanese businesses in piercing so many overseas markets, including our own. Yet, it is clear that our markets are more open to your products and your investments than yours are to ours. And it is clear that governmental policies consistently promoting production over consumption, exports over domestic sales, and protections of the home market contribute to this problem. The trade deficit is on the rise this year even with the market rise of the yen against the dollar. Though American purchases of Japanese products have remained fairly constant, Japanese purchases of American products have dropped markedly as a consequence of slow growth here in your economy with no offsetting government policies to stimulate demand. This problem has, as all of you know, fueled resentment in our country both from workers and from businesses who have worked hard to streamline their operations, reduce labor costs, and increase productivity and now want the benefits that can only come from being able to compete and win in a global economy. Our people understand when our Nation has a huge trade deficit with an emerging economy like China. The same was true just a few years ago with Korea and Taiwan. But both those nations have moved closer to trade balance with the U.S. as they have become more prosperous. The same has not happened with Japan. This persistent trade imbalance has not just hurt American workers and businesses, it has hurt the Japanese people. It has deprived you as consumers of the full benefit of your hard and productive work. For example, partly because of restrictive economic policies, the average Japanese family pays more than twice as much of your income for food as the average American family. And many other consumer products are far, far more expensive here than elsewhere, with these differentials going far beyond what can be accounted for by the transportation costs of bringing products to this market. Our relationships with Japan have been durable not only because of our security alliance and our political partnership but because our economic relationship has actually served our interests and yours. I believe we must change this economic interest to improve the lives not just of the American people but of the Japanese people as well. It would be wrong for me to come here as President to ask you to embrace changes that would only benefit the people who live in my country. I believe that the changes I advocate will benefit both of us, or I would not be here pushing them. During my April meeting with Prime Minister Miyazawa, we agreed to build a new framework for trade on macroeconomic, sectoral, and structural issues. Now, I don't know how that translates into Japanese, but the average American has no idea what that means. [Laughter] What it means is that we are going to try to deal honestly with the differences we have over our nations' economic policies. We want to talk about the specific sectors of the economy where we believe that more trade is warranted. We want to talk about structural differences between our two countries that operate as effective barriers to finding greater balance and greater volume of trade. Our governments have made progress in these last few days in crafting the basic principles of this new framework. And we will persist until we can produce a sound agreement that is in the interests of people in both countries. What the United States seeks, let me make clear, is not managed trade or so-called trade by the numbers but better results from better rules of trade. Openness like this cannot simply come from pressure from the United States. That is one reason I wanted so much to be here with you today. A new openness can only come ultimately when Japanese leaders and Japanese citizens recognize that it is in your interests to pursue this course. So today I would send this message to all of you and to the people beyond the walls here in this hall: You have a common cause with the people of America, a common cause against outdated practices that undermine our relationship and diminish the quality of your lives. The ideas I propose are beneficial to both of us because they will increase the number and lower the costs of the products you are able to buy, the services you are able to access, and they will thereby reward the work, the education, and the skills that you bring to daily life here in Japan. You are entitled to no less, and it will be a part of your role as a great nation for the foreseeable future to have that sort of open relationship. We should take these steps together for ourselves and for future generations. I am optimistic that the people of Japan and the people of the United States can hear the same message and move toward the same goal. Japan has, after all, a proud heritage of embracing bold change when the times call for it. Much of the success you have enjoyed in recent years comes from a phenomenal ability to adapt to the changing contours of the global economy. And over 120 years ago, the leaders of the Meiji Restoration embarked on a series of rapid and successful initiatives that transformed a feudal Japan into a modern society, making it more open to the West and the broader world, without sacrificing the uniqueness of the Japanese culture. On this campus today, there is a statue honoring one of the great statesmen of that period, this school's founder, Count Okuma. In his exhaustive narrative of the Meiji Restoration, Okuma attributes the period's reforms, and I quote, to ``thoughtful and farsighted Japanese leaders.'' And he concludes, ``Even as the spirit of liberality has animated the Japanese race during the past half-century of its remarkable progress, so it will ever impel its march along the paths of civilization and humanity.'' To keep the country's doors wide open is a national principle to which Japan has attached the greatest importance from its earliest days. I believe and hope that spirit still prevails and that a stronger Japan-U.S. economic relationship, driven by mutual wisdom, can power our new Pacific community well into the next century. The second building block of that community must be a more open regional and global economy. That means that together we must resist the pressures that are now apparent in all wealthy countries to put up walls and to protect specific markets and constituencies in times of slow growth. We must resist them because the only way wealthy countries can grow richer is if there is global economic growth and we can increase trade with people who themselves are growing more prosperous. An essential starting point is the successful completion of the Uruguay round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. I am committed to doing that by the end of this year, and I hope that your government is also. I believe we should also work to reduce regional trade barriers. That is what we in the United States are attempting to do in negotiating an agreement with Mexico and Canada not to close North America to the rest of the world but to open it up. And perhaps we should consider Asian-Pacific trading areas as well. The most promising economic forum we have for debating a lot of these issues in the new Pacific community is the Organization for Asian- Pacific Economic Cooperation, APEC. The 15 members of APEC account for nearly half of the world's output and most of the fastest growing economies. This fall, we will host the APEC ministerial meeting in Seattle. I will speak at that meeting to signal America's engagement in the region. But I hope we can go beyond it. I am consulting with the leaders of APEC at this moment on a proposal that they join me in Seattle in an informal leadership conference to discuss what we can do to continue to bring down the barriers that divide us and to create more opportunities for all of our people. In addressing common economic challenges we can begin to chart a course toward prosperity and opportunity for the entire region. Of course, the purpose of meetings like this is not simply more meetings and communiques, it is to improve our people's lives, not just the lives of those who dash around financial districts in Tokyo or New York with cellular telephones in their pockets but the millions of people in my country and the billions of people on the Earth who work hard every day in factories and on farms simply to feed their families and to give their children a better life than they have enjoyed. It will make a world of difference to them if our leaders can set pro-grow policies, dismantle trade barriers, and get government out of the way. Expanded trade and more open economies will not only enrich people, they also empower them. Trade is a revolutionary force that wears down the foundations of despotic rule. The experiences of the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea, and others prove that the move toward more open economies also feeds people's hunger for democracy and freedom and more open political systems. This then should be our third priority in building a new Pacific community: to support the wave of democratic reform sweeping across this region. Economic growth, of course, can occur in closed societies, even in repressive ones. But in an information age, it cannot ultimately be maintained. People with prosperity simply crave more freedom. Open societies are better able to address the frictions that economic growth creates and to assure the continuance of prosperity. A free press roots out corruption, even though it sometimes aggravates political leaders. The rule of law encourages and protects investments. This spread of democracy is one of the best guarantees of regional peace and prosperity and stability that we could ever have in this region. Democracies make better neighbors. They don't wage war on each other, engage in terrorism, or generate refugees. Democracy makes it possible for allies to continue their close relations despite changes in leadership. Democracy's virtues are at the core of why we have worked so hard to support the reforms and the reformers in Russia, which is now on a path toward becoming one of the Pacific's great democratic powers. The movement toward democracy is the best guarantor of human rights. Some have argued that democracy is somehow unsuited for Asia, or at least for some nations in Asia, that human rights are relative and that they simply mask Western cultural imperialism. I believe those voices are wrong. It is not Western urging or Western imperialism but the aspiration of Asian peoples themselves that explain the growing number of democracies and democratic movements in this region. And it is an insult to the spirit and hopes and dreams of the people who live here to assert that anything else is true. Each of our Pacific nations must pursue progress while maintaining the best of their unique cultures. But there is no cultural justification for torture or tyranny. We refuse to let repression cloak itself in moral relativism, for democracy and human rights are not occidental yearnings, they are universal yearnings. These, then, are the economic essentials for this new Pacific community, one in which most of you, being so much younger than I am, will spend far more of your lives in than will I. A better U.S.-Japan relationship, more open economies and trade, more democratic governments, these things will make your lives better. I will pursue these goals vigorously. You will see that commitment reflected in what our administration does. Together we can make this decade and the coming century a time of greater security, democracy, prosperity, and personal, family, community, and national empowerment. So today, on this holiday of Tanabata, a holiday of joining together and hopeful wishes, let us wish for a new Pacific community, built on shared effort, shared benefit, and a shared destiny. Let us write out our brightest dreams for our children on pieces of paper as bright and differently colored and numberless as are the peoples of the Asian- Pacific region. In the spirit of this holiday, let us fly those dreams from bamboo poles that are as high as our hopes for the era, and then, together, let us dedicate ourselves to the hard work of making those dreams come true. Senator Kennedy was right when he said that change has its enemies. But my friends, we can make change our friend. Thank you very much. Now, I'm going to take some questions, and I think I'm supposed to go down here. So I will try to go down there without breaking my leg, and then we'll take some questions. Japanese Imperial Family”