Bush, in Radio Address, Cites U.S. Trade Gains

The United States is the world leader in exports and its manufactured goods are more competitive internationally than a decade ago, but those encouraging facts are being clouded by news reports featuring “Chicken Little hysterics,” President Bush said Saturday.

Using his regular Saturday radio address to boost his Administration’s accomplishments on international trade, Bush also assailed proponents of get-tough attitudes toward American trading partners.

“Our competitors are tough,” he said. “Some want us to respond to these challenges as if they were a bad dream, just hide under the covers and hope it goes away. They may be talking tough, but they’re really running scared. The problem is they’re running the wrong way.

“The answer isn’t to build up our barriers, it’s to get other countries to tear down theirs.”

The President’s remarks came two days after a meeting with European Common Market leaders to discuss the state of the Uruguay Round of international trade negotiations. If the talks eventually succeed, Bush said, it will mean hundreds of thousands of new jobs for American workers.

Despite reports that emphasize the negative, he said, the news is generally positive. He cited a one-month record of $38 billion in exports during February.

It is good news, “not just for our coastal states and port towns, but all across America.” For example, he said, jobs supported by trade include 150,000 in Tennessee, 120,000 in Arizona and 90,000 each in Colorado and Iowa.

A North American Free Trade Agreement would create another 360,000 U.S. jobs and boost trade between the United States and Mexico by $10 billion, he said.

In a Democratic Party response, House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) took issue with Bush’s rosy portrayal and the near-term outlook for U.S. trade, charging that the President “sees things not as they are, but as he wishes them to be.”

The Administration, he said, is without a strategy to deal with the new economic superpowers in both Europe and Asia.

“Whether the issue is Mexico free trade, Japanese protectionism or European subsidies of aircraft, the President just doesn’t get it,” Gephardt said. “He’s unwilling to force our trading partners to play fair, and he’s unwilling to lead Americans in critical areas like education, retraining and research so that they can help themselves.

“Restoring America’s economic strength requires more than a ‘message of the week.’ The days of free trade theories, cutting wages, replacing workers and abandoning American industries are behind us. The days of tough decisions and big changes are upon us,” he said.