SENATOR JOE LIEBERMAN [D-CN.]: Thank you. That was great. Now you can definitely be seated. Thank you. In the spirit of the season, I feel as if I should say "Now, let's play ball." [Laughter.]
Will you allow me the parochialism of starting by saying, hey, how about that Bernie Williams. Right, folks? [Applause.]
It is my honor to begin this conference and thank you all for being here. This is actually a very important day. I think a different kind of DLC annual conference. Last night, President Clinton started it all with I thought a very important and eloquent speech. And he laid out some rules, chose our forum to lay out some rules for the American position, some standards for the American position at the WTO meeting in Seattle. But he said something at the beginning of his remarks that I want to just try to paraphrase this morning because it leads into what I've wanted to say, which is he recounted the way in which he and Vice President Gore took so many of the ideas, the values of opportunity, responsibility, community, the programmatic ideas of the DLC and the New Democratic movement into the campaign of '92, into office in '93, and implemented them in a way that not only has worked to bring our country to this time of unprecedented prosperity and security, but also did it in a way that created a broad new political consensus within our own Democratic Party around ideas of fiscal responsibility and pro-economic growth, understanding that that means working with and being pro-business; welfare reform; crime control; National Service. And we could go on.
But as the President said, there remains one major policy area in which there is not now that same kind of broad consensus within the Democratic Party. And that is the subject of our program today, which is trade and the global economy. If I may just add parenthetically and not irrelevantly how troubling the last several days, and particularly the vote yesterday in the Senate on the Test Ban Treaty was. And I say it's relevant to the topic today because it seems to me that a precondition of a vibrant global economy is the security of the world and the order of the world's economy. And nothing is more important to that than American leadership in the world. Yesterday's vote, no matter how one explains it or who one blames for it -- and there's plenty of blame to go around -- I fear has diminished the international political and economic leadership of the United States, and sadly so. And it reminds us that there is not -- while there is work to be done on developing and building consensus within our party on the question of trade, there's a much broader division between the two parties that hurts our country. In many ways, I would say that the challenge we face now as we meet the global economy is as much political as it is economic. Here at home, clearly, we must convince those who see globalization as a threat to their personal well-being that there is promise for them in a more connected, more dynamic and more democratic planet. And just as America is well positioned to compete technologically in this shrinking world, so, I believe, is the New Democratic movement well positioned to bring our party and our country to new common constructive ground on this question.
After all, with our tradition of internationalism, with our faith in free markets, with the entrepreneurial spirit that we have celebrated, and with our trust in the fundamental American values of opportunity and upward mobility, we are the natural torch bearers to success in the global economy in the next century. To do this, we've got to convince those many Americans who are doubtful or convinced contrary that free trade does not mean a free ticket for them to the unemployment line, and that globalization with the right public policies behind it will bolster their family's income and quality of life. We've got to
offer programs to fulfill that promise and build bridges to those, particularly in the labor movement, from whom we have been too long separated on these policy questions.
That, I hope, is what this conference can begin to do today, to show that this new world of globalization is, in fact, going to be a good deal, not just for multinational corporations seeking new markets, but for dislocated middle-aged workers and single mothers on welfare seeking a new lease on life.
With that in mind, I want to take just a few moments now to lay out some thoughts that I hope we'll keep in mind as we try to make the critical case that free and fair trade are in our national interest, that greater global relations will serve not only our national purpose, but will expand the winner circle here at home.
First, in making this argument, we've got to recognize that there are legitimate reasons for some of the public skepticism and, in some cases, hostility toward globalization. That's especially true for many blue collar, low-skill workers who increasingly feel that the good times are rolling by them as their employers appear to casually ship their jobs overseas and the digital divide separating the information technologies -- from the information technology haves from the IT have-nots grows. Amidst all the talk about interconnectiveness, many of our fellow Americans don't see the significant connection between our national success in breaking down trade barriers and opening new markets and the unparalleled peacetime expansion we're experiencing. In other words, they don't see how world trade pays off for them, nor do they see anything that their government is doing to ameliorate the impact of the seismic changes our economy is undergoing. In other words, while most Americans are rising with the new economy, many clearly are not, and we've got to acknowledge that reality and work with it, not walk away from it.
Fortunately, we have a case to make. There's compelling evidence of the benefits that the American economy reaps from international trade and investment, from producers who increase their income from exports and their access to capital through foreign markets, to workers who enjoy higher wages as a result of higher company earnings, and to an economy which, as a whole, continues to expand as new markets open. In fact, it's hard to overstate the importance of economic connectedness to our economic future in the next century. Last year, 30% of our GDP, nearly one-third of our economy, could be attributed to trade and return on investments abroad. And that share is naturally going to rise over the next five years and beyond.
There's similar evidence of the tangible benefits of this trade-driven boom to workers. Between 1994 and 1998, 1.3 million new jobs supported by exports of goods and services have been created in the United States. And these are quality jobs paying 13 to 16% above the average wage and rising living standards of average Americans. And we can't forget either how we all as consumers, particularly those with limited disposal income, win from the growth of imports. Free trade means more competition, which means more choices in the goods and services we can buy, and ultimately means lower prices for American families.
So that helps to explain, I think, the case we have for why trade is good today.
And what about tomorrow, particularly for average workers? Well, I'd say a good place to start is with our technological superiority, which has been, and will be, crucial to squeezing out inefficiencies and posting higher productivity gains than our competitors, which is good for our economy and everybody in it. And for those workers and families who suffer the inevitable consequences of global trade and don't have the skills or training to find new ones quickly, we've got to have a better answer than just the citing of studies, true as they are, which show that 90% of all job displacements in manufacturing are due to factors other than trade, or to talk about the opportunity costs of open markets, specialization and competition and hope that they understand that globalization will probably pan out for them in the long run. We've got to do more than that. We've got to find new ways to make this new economy work for these workers who feel left behind and often are left behind. And that means helping them acquire the tools to make the most of their own lives.
We are, in fact, making progress toward that New Democratic goal. The President's budget includes $368 million for a universal reemployment initiative which would address the needs of dislocated workers through a variety of training and job search programs, and a host of public-private partnerships around the country, such as regional skill alliances, expanded by the DLC and PPI, and trade adjustment programs are complementing these federally funded efforts. But we've got to do more to make sure that the dividends of globalization are obtainable by more and more workers in our country. That, in the end, is the true challenge of globalization, as Mike Moore, the director-general of the World Trade Organization recently said, and it's a challenge that we in government must meet if we are to ask a broader range of people and groups within our party to support globalization and free trade policies. That is what the PPI and DLC through our New Economy Task Force program has been doing under Rob Atkinson's leadership in a very effective way.
As you know, in a few weeks, the WTO will convene a critically important trade meeting in Seattle, which will literally bring the world to our Pacific doorstep. It's expected to be contentious, controversial and consuming. As the President said last night, it will evoke protests and concentrate a lot of anxieties about globalization in one place at one time. But it also will concentrate the opportunity we have to convince the doubters in America that we can and will work together to overcome their fears about the new economy. It will provide a historic platform to President Clinton, our New Democratic movement's standard-bearer and a great champion of the new economy and globalization and free trade. It's an opportunity for him to tell America the compelling story of how knocking down barriers has lifted up our economic fortunes, to show why it's in America's best interests to continue our cooperation with our NAFTA partners, with the EU and Japan, and to pursue new agreements that will open access to emerging markets in China and South America, to outline what additional steps our government can take to insure that globalization helps to connect every working family to the American dream and to drive home the fact that globalization is more than central to our future; it's simply inescapable. We will not grow if we are not global.
The world is growing more interconnected and it is simply not realistic to expect that the United States, no matter how rich or strong we are, can stick our heads in the sand of our own economy and hope to maintain our prosperity. Nor is it realistic to expect that we can shield ourselves from the consequences of the shrinking financial world around us, which we learned painfully during the recent global financial crisis that sent shockwaves through our markets. Much like the proverbial butterfly, when a trader flaps his wings in Brazil today, he can cause an economic hurricane in Kansas.
Making this case won't always be easy as we in Congress learned during the recent debate on steel quotas. But we must make it. And I hope that the work in making it and building coalitions within our party will move forward substantially at this meeting today. We have great participants from a variety of orientations and organizations that are on the panels today. These are not just panels of people making speeches. There, I hope, will be conversations among themselves and with you, maybe even some arguments, but the arguments that will lead to discussion, and hopefully, ultimately, resolution, to find in this still divided area of our party's ideology and politics a third way, a common ground between laissez-faire and protectionism, between those who see the international economy and say let the markets do what they will, take off restraints, don't worry about the consequences to people in our respective countries, on one side, and to those on the other side who say we can't enter the global economy unless government will guarantee each and every one of us in every country in the world, and particularly the United States, that we won't be adversely affected at all by that global economy.
With you today, before you today is a small piece of paper that says a lot: Trade and Globalization: A Third Way. I hope you'll take much with you today, but particularly this piece of paper. Three simple points. Continued support for opening new markets; support the WTO as a model of strong rules-based institutions at the global level; and then a domestic agenda which will expand the circle of opportunity of Americans benefiting from the global economy. This effort that we are engaged in here today in this conference I think is critical to our country's future, to our party's future and to our candidate's future. And who better to lead it than the Democratic Leadership Council and the New Democratic Movement, the most progressive, pro-market, pro-opportunity political movement in America today. New world, new economy, New Democrats. That is a winning combination that can and will expand the winner's circle for all Americans.
Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
And now it is my honor, which I never tire of carrying out -- where is he? -- to introduce our mentor and our manager and continuing source of inspiration as we take the New Democratic Movement into the next century, Al From.
[Applause.]
