Ron Brown among cabinet officials who negotiated $6 billion airplane deal

Jet, March 7, 1994

U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown was among the three Cabinet officials who recently negotiated a $6 billion contract from Saudi Arabia to build 50 airliners.

The breakthrough was enough for a festive event at the White House to trumpet an economic comeback on the West Coast. At the announcement news conference, Secretary Brown told of the efforts of President Clinton's administration to beef up the economy and gave credit for the victory to President Clinton, whom he introduced at the press conference.

Standing alongside Clinton in the White House for the announcement were Brown, Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, and chairmen Frank Shrontz of Boeing and John McDonnell of McDonnell Douglas.

The planes will be built by Boeing Co. of Seattle and McDonnell Douglas Corp. of Long Beach, Calif.

Brown said, "We've made a basic decision that if we're going to compete in the global marketplace, it's going to take a real partnership between business and government."

President Clinton talked about the Saudi deal on the nationally-syndicated "Imus in the Morning" Radio Show: "On this Saudi deal, we had three Cabinet members actually go to Saudi Arabia working on it-the Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, whose major job it is to sell American products abroad, once Mickey Kantor (U.S. Trade Representative) gets us a fair framework; the Transportation Secretary, because it was airlines - Federico Pena; and the Secretary of State (Warren Christopher) because it affected our foreign policy. They all went through Saudi Arabia and made an effort to help sell it. And, you know, this is going to have a positive impact on about 60,000 jobs, which is an amazing thing."