Bill Clinton: “Administration's Economic Team April 12, 1996 Thank you very much. Mr. Vice President, Ambassador Kantor, Senator Levin…”

“Administration's Economic Team April 12, 1996 Thank you very much. Mr. Vice President, Ambassador Kantor, Senator Levin, and Congressman Levin; all the distinguished leaders from the auto industry and Mr. J.C. Phillips from the UAW and to Jim Hill; all the people here from the agencies that are part of our Nation's economic team that really worked so hard to achieve these results. I welcome all of you here. I want to thank you for what you said, Jim. I am a car guy. I was 6 years old the first time I crawled underneath a 1952 Buick in my father's tiny dealership in Hope, Arkansas, population 6,000, and I never quite got over it. And one of the things that I promised myself I would do if I ever got a chance to have an impact on it was to give the American automobile industry the chance to be rewarded for its willingness to compete. And that is what we have worked hard to do in this administration. I just saw something--Mickey Kantor and I walked outside, along with the Vice President, Mr. Panetta, and I saw something I never thought I would live to see--and just 4 years ago, if you had told me that I would see it, I'm not sure I would have believed it--right-hand drive American models made by American workers in American plants bound for Japan, a Ford Taurus, a GM-built Cavalier, a Chrysler Neon, built for the Japanese market where consumers are now freely buying tens of thousands more American cars than ever before.…”