Remarks by the President at the Business Roundtable. Business Roundtable Headquarters, Washington, DC, Dec 3, 2014.
www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-off ... business-roundtable
Quote:
"I was -- Andrew Liveris [chairman and CEO of Dow Chemical; holding citizenships of (where he was born) and US] and I were talking -- I was with his people in Brisbane, Australia, and at the G20, what was striking was the degree of optimism that the world felt about the American economy -- an optimism that in some ways is greater than how Americans sometimes feel about the American economy. I think what you saw among world leaders was consistent with what we know from global surveys, which is when you ask people now, what is the number-one place to invest [ie, foreign direct investment] , it's the United States of America. It was China for quite some time. Now folks want to put money back into this country.
"Q Could you provide a global perspective for us? * * * THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me talk about economics and then I’ll talk about geopolitics. * * * The United States stands out as an economy that’s going strong at the moment.Japan is contracting in a way that has surprised many analysts and I know surprised Prime Minister Abe. He’s got new elections. There’s a delay in the consumption tax, the second phase of it, that was slated to go into effect. They’re pursuing fairly aggressive monetary policy. But I don’t know whether they’re going to be able to pull out of the current variation on what’s been a pretty long-term slump any time soon, and they’ve still got some debt overhang that they’ve got to address. [Talk about economies of Europe and US.] The emerging markets [judging from the next sentence, Obama mainly has China in his mind when discussing 'emerging markets'] I think have been slower than anticipated. China has a fairly good rationale for that. They’re trying to shift away from a model that was entirely export driven to a model that recognizes they need stronger demand inside of China. And they’ve got a nascent, but growing middle class start to have enough confidence to spend some money. But that requires a complete reorganization of their economy. They’ve got a real estate situation, in part because of state-sponsored spending, that is always at risk of overheating. And so the new normal that they’re anticipating means that they won’t be growing quite as fast as they had before. If they grow at 7 percent, we’d take it, but for them, that’s significantly slower. And that then has ramifications in terms of demand for commodities, which, in turn, affects a whole lot of emerging markets. [Switched to India's economy.]
"On the geopolitics, my meeting with President Xi I thought was very productive and obviously we had some significant deliverables. He has consolidated power faster and more comprehensively than probably anybody since I think Deng Xiaoping. And everybody has been impressed by his clout inside of China after only a year and a half or two years. There are dangers in that -- on issues of human rights, on issues of clamping down on dissent. He taps into a nationalism that worries his neighbors and that we’ve seen manifest in these maritime disputes in the South China Sea as well as the Senkaku Islands. On the other hand, I think they have a very strong interest in maintaining good relations with the United States. And my visit was a demonstration of their interest in managing this relationship effectively. Our goal with China has been to say to them, we, too, want a constructive relationship. We've got an integrated world economy and the two largest economies in the world have to have an effective relationship together. It can be a win-win for both sides, but there are some things we need them to fix.And we are pressing them very hard on issues of cybersecurity and cyber theft, mostly in the commercial area. It is indisputable that they engage in it, and it is a problem.And we push them hard on it. One thing the BRT [Business Roundtable] can do is to help us by speaking out when you're getting strong-armed about some of these issues.And I know it's sensitive because you don't want to be necessarily penalized in your operations in China, but that's an area that's important.Same thing with intellectual property.We are pushing them hard on that. One of the ancillary benefits of the Trans-Pacific Partnership is to create high standards in the region that then China has to adapt to, as opposed to a race to the bottom where there’s no IP protection, for example, and China is really setting the terms for how trade and investment should operate. President Xi is interested in a business investment treaty. That could be significant because it could help to change the environment in which you are able to invest in China without being discriminated against relative to domestic firms.We've got a lot of work to do on that, but that's a work stream that we've set up. So I think we have to be cautious and clear-eyed about our relationship with China, but there’s no reason why we should not be able to manage that relationship in a way that is productive for us and productive for the world. I'm less optimistic about Russia.
"Dave, you were asking earlier about China.I do not take potential competition from China lightly, but I am absolutely confident we’ve got better cars than China does. And I’d much rather have our problems than China’s problems. That I’m confident about.On the other hand, the one thing I will say is that if they need to build some stuff, they can build it. And over time, that wears away our advantage competitively.It’s embarrassing -- you drive down the roads, and you look at what they’re able to do. The place that we stayed at for the APEC Summit was this lavish conference center, and it probably put most of the conference centers here to shame. They built it in a year. Now, you’ve got an authoritarian government that isn’t necessarily accountable. I understand we’re not going to do that. But if they’re able to build their ports, their airports, their smart grid, their air traffic control systems, their broadband systems with that rapidity and they’re highly superior to ours -- over time, that’s going to be a problem for us.
"And just in terms of macroeconomics.It's not a sexy argument to make to the public, but we are younger than our competitors. And that is entirely because of immigration. And when you look at the problems that China, Japan, Europe, Russia, are all going to have, a lot of it just has to do with they’re getting old.And we stay young because were constantly being replenished by these striving families from around the world.And we should want that to continue.
"Q: * * * .How can we get TPA [Trade Promotion Authority laws] passed [by Congress?] * * * THE PRESIDENT: * * * And there’s a half-truth that is magnified I think in the discussions around trade that global competition has contributed to some of that wage stagnation. [Talk about fallacy of the half-truth. Then about the correct part:] But I say it's a half-truth because there’s no doubt that some manufacturing moved offshore in the wake of China entering the WTO and as a consequence of NAFTA. Now, more of those jobs [in US] were lost because of automation and capital investment * * * Part of the argument that I’m making to Democrats is [traditionally Democrats, and their labor allies, are against free trade agreements], don’t fight the last war -- you already have. If somebody is wanting to outsource, if any of the companies here wanted to locate in China, you’ve already done it.If you wanted to locate in a low-wage country with low labor standards and low environmental standards, there hasn’t been that much preventing you from doing so.
"And we were talking about China earlier. I would just point to one simple example, and that is you would not want your kids growing up in Beijing right now, because they could not breathe. And the fact of the matter is that used to be true in Los Angeles -- as recently as 1970. And the reason it changed was because of the Clean Air Act. And in my hometown of Chicago, the Chicago River caught fire right around the same period, and because of the Clean Water Act, you now have folks paddling down the water and fishing. And the commercial renaissance of downtown Chicago is, in large
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发表于 12-3-2014 16:25:12
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