Bill Clinton: “It could be, but I think they would have to think long and hard about it. I mean, after all, with all the Japanese…”

“It could be, but I think they would have to think long and hard about it. I mean, after all, with all the Japanese investment in this country and all the jobs that are here and with all the trade we have in Japan, they still have a built-in trade surplus of tens of billions of dollars, and not only with us but with many other countries. They have reached a point now in their gross and wealth and strength when it is simply no longer acceptable for, I think for their own consumers as well as for the rest of us, for them to follow a policy so radically different from the policy of every other advanced economy. It costs jobs and incomes in our country and Europe and other places and causes their people to have to pay almost 40 percent more for basic products. I just think it's an unsustainable policy. I said so last summer when I went there; I still believe it. And it's just not acceptable for the United States to continue on the same path.”