Remarks by the President on World Trade Week

Business Wire, May 23, 2008

WASHINGTON -- South Lawn

10:54 A.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Thanks for coming; please be seated. Welcome to the White House, the South Lawn. It's a joy to welcome entrepreneurs and business leaders and folks who understand the importance of this country being competent enough to work to open up markets for our goods and products and services. Obviously some of the exporters are pretty good salesmen and women -- after all, they let you drive a tractor here on the South Lawn. (Laughter.) Imagine what the Secret Service was saying.

I'm really pleased to welcome members of the Congress: Congressmen Petri and Herger are here. Thanks for coming. Petri is here because he believes the Harley Davidson is a product that people around the world ought to be able to drive by making it more affordable -- I suspect that's why you're here -- as well as some other trucks made in your state.

I want to thank the members of the Cabinet. Thank you all for being such strong advocates of free and fair trade. We've got the Secretary of Agriculture here, Secretary Schafer. His being here sends a message that the American farmer and rancher expects us to work hard to open up markets for the products they grow. So if you're a farmer out there in the heartland, seems like you'd want somebody working on your behalf here in Washington, to be able -- make it easier for you to sell your crops. And that's exactly what we're doing in this administration. Mr. Secretary, thanks for coming.

Carlos Gutierrez is the Secretary of Commerce. Trade means commerce. Elaine Chao is here from the Department of Labor. Madam Secretary, thank you. Your presence here is clear recognition that the more products we sell overseas the more likely it is somebody is going to work.

Today I'm going to spend some time so our fellow citizens understand the importance of trade by connecting trade with products with jobs. Good jobs policy is a good trade policy. I appreciate very much Sue Schwab here; she's the U.S. Trade Representative. Her job is to open up markets. I'm going to talk about free trade agreements that she's worked to put in place that open up markets for U.S. goods and services. I really appreciate John Veroneau joining us as well. He's the Deputy, his job is to also work with the Ambassador to open up markets.

I want to thank Federico Humbert, the Ambassador de Panama. I want to thank Lee Tae-sik, Ambassador from South Korea. I want to thank Mariana Pacheco, who is the Deputy Chief of Mission for the Embassy of Colombia. These are three nations I'm going to be talking about. I want to thank you all for coming. I really appreciate you giving me a chance to talk about your countries in your presence -- because I want your leaders to understand the Bush administration and a lot of members of Congress believe it's in our national interest that we have free and fair trade with your nations.

I thank the representatives of the companies whose products are here. I want to thank the members of the business community. And thanks for your caring about your country.

First of all, the -- you know, it's rough economic times. Small business owners know what I'm talking about; large business owners know what I'm talking about. It's a period of uncertainty. And one way to deal with uncertainty in the economy is to work from your strengths. One strength, of course, is to trust the American people -- and the best way to trust them is to keep your taxes low. We really don't need to be sending -- (applause.) If there's uncertain times, there's no worse signal to send than, you know, we may be raising your taxes. That creates even more uncertainty. There's got to be consistency in the tax code so people can plan; so individuals can plan and small business can plan and large businesses can plan. Congress needs to make the tax relief we passed permanent in order to deal with the uncertainty in the economy.

Of course, they got a huge appetite for spending your money, so it shouldn't surprise you that some up there really do want to raise your taxes. And we'll do everything we can -- we're not going to let them raise your taxes, but the best signal that Congress could send for the sake of economic growth and vitality is that we're going to keep your taxes low by making the tax cuts permanent.

Another thing Congress can do is pass trade agreements that open up markets. You know, 40 percent of our growth last year -- during a time of economic uncertainty, 40 percent of the growth came as a result of exports. So when I say "play to our strengths," one of the strengths during this period of time is to continue to export products. If the growth that we had during some quarters, recent quarters was as a result of exports, it seems like we ought to be working to create more exports, to be able to sell our goods and services into more markets.

And we have an opportunity to do that by opening up markets with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. You know, we trust you to create jobs. The government ought to trust you by opening up more markets, by making sure the playing field is level for our producers. That's all we want: We just want to be treated fairly in the world.