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"A comprehensive, collaborative elections resource."
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Bill Clinton - Remarks on the Signing of NAFTA (December 8, 1993)
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| Parent | Parent Candidate |
| Contributor | Thomas Walker |
| Post Date | , 12:am |
| Description | Thank you very much. I'm delighted to see all of you here. I thank Speaker Foley and the Republican leader, Bob Michel, for joining us today. There are so many people to thank, and the Vice President did a marvelous job. I do want to mention, if I might, just three others: Laura Tyson, the Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers; Bob Rubin, head of my national economic team; and one Republican Member of the House that wasn't mentioned, Congressman David Dreier, who went with me on a rainy day to Louisiana to campaign for NAFTA. There are many others that I might mention, but I thank all of you for what you have done.
I also can't help but note that in spite of all the rest of our efforts, there was that magic moment on Larry King, which made a lot of difference. And I thank the Vice President for that and for so much else. In the campaign, when we decided to come out for NAFTA, he was a strong supporter of that position in our personal meetings, long before we knew whether we would even be here or not.
I also would be remiss if I did not personally thank both Mickey Kantor and Mack McLarty for the work they did, especially in the closing days with the Mexican trade representatives and the Mexican Government. I'd also like to web come here the representatives from Mexico and Canada and tell them they are, in fact, welcome here. They are our partners in the future that we are trying to make together.
I want to say a special word of thanks to the Cabinet because we have tried to do something that I have not always seen in the past. And we try to get all of our Departments and all of our Cabinet leaders to work together on all the things that we all care about. And a lot of them, therefore, bad to take a lot of personal time and business time away from their very busy schedules to do this. I thank the former leaders of our Government that were mentioned and our military. I can't help but noting, since General Powell is here, that every senior military officer with whom I spoke about NAFTA was perhaps—they were as a group perhaps the most intensely supportive of any group I spoke with. and I think it is because they have in their bones the experience of the world of the last several decades. And they knew we could not afford to turn away from our leadership responsibilities and our constructive involvement in the world. And many of them, of course, still in uniform, were not permitted to say that in public and should not have been. But I think I can say that today I was profoundly personally moved by the remarks that they made.
I do want to say, also, a special word of thanks to all the citizens who helped us, the business leaders, the labor folks, the environmental people who came out and worked through this-many of them at great criticism, particularly in the environmental movement—and some of the working people who helped it. And a group that was quite pivotal to our success that I want to acknowledge specifically are the small business people, many of whom got themselves organized and came forward and tried to help us. They made a real difference.
And they've been mentioned, but I couldn't let this moment go by without thanking my good friend Bill Daley and Congressman Bill Frenzel for their work in helping to mobilize this effort. Congressman Frenzel wrote me a great letter the other day and sent me one of his famous doodles that he doodled around the NAFTA legislation, which I am now having framed. But they sort of represented the bipartisan spirit that encaptured the Congress, encaptured the country in the cause to change. I hope that we can have more than that in the days and months and years ahead. It was a very fine thing.
This whole issue turned out to be a defining moment for our Nation. I spoke with one of the folks who was in the reception just a few moments ago who told me that he was in China watching the vote on international television when it was taken. And be said you would have had to be there to understand how important this was to the rest of the world, not because of the terms of NAFTA, which basically is a trade agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, but because it became a symbolic struggle for the spirit of our country and for how we would approach this very difficult and rapidly changing world dealing with our own considerable challenges here at home. |
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