Bill Clinton: “Basically, no. We've had a lot of conversations with the new leader of Canada and the new party. He raised a lot of the…”

“Basically, no. We've had a lot of conversations with the new leader of Canada and the new party. He raised a lot of the same questions about NAFTA that I did. And when I called him--I mean, what I wanted to do with this trade agreement, and I guess I ought to tell you that, I wanted to have three things added to the agreement, which have been added. One is, I wanted to know that there would be some device by which we could make sure the Mexicans were moving to enforce their own labor code so that we would raise labor standards on both sides of the border. We have that now. Secondly, I wanted to know that they would enforce their environmental laws, because they weren't now. Their environmental code is actually pretty good, but it's not being enforced. So we set up a mechanism for doing that and a financing mechanism to get the money to do it. The third thing I wanted was a provision that would take account of unintended consequences. And that really goes to something that two or three of you have asked about. That is, suppose all these brilliant people who have been negotiating this turn out to be wrong about something, not just for us but for them, too? I mean, suppose within a year after this deal takes effect, there's some small but not insignificant part of their economy or ours that seems to be on the verge of just vanishing like that, something no one foresaw? This agreement has a provision to put the brakes on that and to reinstitute the former system as it applies to that sector of the economy for a period of 3 years while we work it out. So there's a protection against unintended consequences. And the last thing I guess I ought to say is, suppose any party becomes convinced that the others are proceeding in bad faith; you can pull out with 6 months notice. That's another thing most Americans don't know. This is not the enemy. In other words, if somebody turns out to be lying or some development turns out to be unanticipated, there are ways to correct this. Now, to go back to your specific question, Canada likes what we did on the environmental agreement, on the labor agreement; they wanted that done. They now have substantially, to the best of my knowledge, no more problems with Mexico. They have some outstanding problems with us in trade, which we are negotiating through now. We do not believe that it will be in any way necessary to reopen the agreement to resolve those problems, and we're working hard on them and we have been this week. So I feel pretty optimistic that it'll be okay. Let's get over here. Give equal time to the other folks here.”