Bill Clinton: “Let me, first of all, say to all of you present that your county has done a smart thing, and I think that other counties…”

“Let me, first of all, say to all of you present that your county has done a smart thing, and I think that other counties should consider following suit. Forty percent of American trade is now with the Pacific region. It's the fastest-growing part of the economy in the world. About 2.5 million American jobs now depend upon trade with the Pacific. It's very, very important. I would say there are three things that we should be doing at the national level. First, we need to complete an agreement before the end of the year on the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the new world trade agreement. The meeting of the G-7 in Tokyo made that much more possible by having the big countries agree to reduce tariffs and to eliminate them entirely. A good study here in this country says that we could add $6 trillion to the world economy by the next decade if we would simply conclude this agreement. That will open a lot of new jobs for Americans in manufacturing and in agriculture and in services. The second thing we need to do is to build stronger ties to these countries. I'm very proud that in the fall of this year I will host a meeting in Seattle, Washington, for the Organization of Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation. All these nations are coming here, and after the ministers meet, the next day many heads of state will meet with me. The third thing we need to do is to redefine our trading relationship with Japan. And as I'm sure you know, at the very end of the G-7 meeting, the Prime Minister of Japan and I agreed to and announced a framework for a new trade relationship in which Japan pledged for the first time to substantially reduce its trade surplus with the United States and to have measurable objective measures of progress in several important areas of our trading relationship. Now, even if we do all that, we still need more local governmental units and especially more American business men and women who are willing to aggressively exploit opportunities in the Pacific area. Americans have got to be better traders and more interested in selling their products and their services around the world. Even small businesses have to do a better job of that. So we're going to do those big three things, but we need more folks like you who are interested in taking advantage of the global economy. Over half of our jobs in the last 5 years have been related in some way to trade and a lot of them to the Pacific. So that's what I think we should do in the Pacific region. Unfunded Federal Mandates”