Bill Clinton: “Let me tell you what we have done. We have concluded with Japan 21, about to be 22 trade agreements now. And since we…”

“Let me tell you what we have done. We have concluded with Japan 21, about to be 22 trade agreements now. And since we did that, in the areas where we concluded trade agreements, our exports to Japan have gone up by 85 percent in the last 4 years, and our trade deficit with Japan has gone down. Until about 5 months ago, the Japanese economy was in a deep recession. It's coming back now, so they can buy even more American products, and I think it'll go down more. But I'm very--that's one of the real success stories here of the work we've done. We're selling Japanese rice from California for the first time. I visited a Chrysler dealership in Tokyo. I visited a Jeep plant, the oldest auto plant in America, in Toledo, Ohio, where they're going to export 41,000 right-hand-drive Jeeps this year, and they've got 700 new jobs because of it. There is no easy way to do this. When you're dealing with an economy that's traditionally been more closed and one that's traditionally been more open, you just have to gut it out issue by issue by issue. We agreed in principle on our insurance agreement, and we're working on three or four other areas now. But the way you have to do it is make sure you're competitive--we're the most competitive country in the world now--and then just fight to open those markets and go try to make the sale. And that's what our trade ambassador, our Commerce Secretary, and all the other people in our administration have tried to do. Mr. Lehrer. Senator? Senator Dole. Well, the bottom line is we've got to stop exporting jobs. We need to keep jobs here. I said there are 357,000 good jobs, manufacturing jobs, which were lost. And I assume some of those because of our trading partners; we didn't have access to their markets. We ought to insist on access. If we don't have access to their markets the same way they have access to our markets, we ought to say, ``Wait, that's enough. Time out. When you give us access, we'll give you access.'' It's very hard to get into the Japanese market, as everybody knows. They want to get into our market. They sell a lot of automobiles here, create a lot of jobs--those who sell exports. And it's very important to the economy. But I think we want to make certain. I supported the President's trade policy, but we've got to be more aggressive. Once you have a policy, then you've got to go out and be aggressive and enforce that policy. There are American jobs that are being lost. This is what Ross Perot complains about. And I'd say to the Reform Party, take a look at the Republican Party. We're the reform party, and we're going to make things better. And one of the things we're going to do is stop exporting jobs in America.”