George H.W. Bush: “I'm just delighted to have had this visit with Prime Minister Mulroney of Canada, welcoming him back to the White House.…”

“I'm just delighted to have had this visit with Prime Minister Mulroney of Canada, welcoming him back to the White House. I think we covered an awful lot of ground in a short time. And just a couple of observations: I know that many are focusing on our trade issues, in particular on trade disputes. Well, that's natural. We've got this enormous, this immense trade that goes on between our two countries. And our bilateral trade has increased by $30 billion since the inception of the Free Trade Agreement in 1989 and now stands at a volume of nearly $200 billion. I believe that this trade is of enormous benefit to the two economies and demonstrates vividly the value of that Free Trade Agreement. And because of the large trade between the U.S. and Canada, there are bound to be some bumps in the road. We have existing mechanisms for dispute settlement. We are using them, including the FTA itself. And as a consequence, I can report that we're making progress in overcoming some of our recent problems. I told the Prime Minister, who forcefully presented Canada's case, that I would work with our administration to see that these disputes receive proper high-level consideration before they go to some form of action. I think this will help. But in any event, we discussed frankly the problems. We also talked about a wide range of international issues, including the coming summit, including the G-7. So we had a very good conversation. And in the Bush view, our administration view, this relationship between Canada and the United States is very, very important to the people of the United States of America. So, welcome back, sir. The Prime Minister. Thank you, Mr. President. As the President said, we had a very far-reaching discussion on a lot of subjects. I'd be happy to take whatever questions are appropriate. But I tried to focus on what our priority problem is at this point in time, and it's trade. And for some time, Canadians have been troubled and angered by the attitude adopted by some people in Washington on major trade issues. Rather than move quickly to resolve or prevent irritants, the tendency was to retaliate against Canadian products by threatening to impose demonstrably unfair penalties on Canadian imports. These actions create uncertainty for investors and exporters and undermine the fundamental intent of the Free Trade Agreement. The President has called me a number of times over the last few weeks, conscious of some of these difficulties that have arisen in a very complex and important trading relationship. We agreed at this meeting today to follow up on it. So we had a very constructive review of these issues. We both intend to raise the level of commitment to resolve and to reduce disputes, to give a higher level of attention in order to manage the relationship and these issues. The President and I are going to work personally to that end. We both recognize that healthy trade between us is vital to recovery. We are the United States' best customer by far, and the United States is ours. We can help each other in terms of economic recovery by reducing the temperature and getting rid of a lot of these irritants, rather than allow them to fester and grow to important status. For example, Canada's merchandise trade surplus was $3.1 billion in the first quarter, as announced this morning, the largest surplus since the second quarter of 1990, and for the first quarter, Canada's exports to the United States are up 8.8 percent from last year. As the President has pointed out, even in a difficult recessionary period, the growth in trade between Canada and the United States is up very impressively. That means jobs in the United States and jobs in Canada, and we have to keep that going. It was a very instructive and helpful meeting, and I thank the President and his advisers and counselors and Cabinet ministers for that. Canada-U.S. Trade”