News | News Releases | 2001

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SENATOR HAGEL: Mr. Chairman, thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Washington. The cherry blossoms are out. The clouds will part. The sun will shine. All is right with the world. We are going to make Jim Harmon our Cherry Blossom Princess for 2001.

Jim, thank you for your service. Jackie Clegg, thank you. The two of you and your team and many here this morning who represent the Ex-Im team have done a remarkable job under some very, very difficult strains, challenges, and conditions.

In many ways, it is not going to get any easier, and I think every one of you who understands this business of trade and how you finance trade and how you promote and build trade understands that very clearly.

I also want to say that as your current chairman indicated, your soon-to-be new chairman, John Robinson, is an exemplary candidate for this job for many reasons, not just because he is superbly qualified, but because of who he is and the real-world experience that he will bring to this job, and I look forward to doing all I can to help expedite his ascension and get him through our process and get him on the job because we need him. American business needs him, and he will do, I think, a rather remarkable job of building on to what has gone before. That is the business at hand, and that is the way we build markets, and that is the way we develop trade.

So the incoming chairman is up to the task, and I am very pleased that the President has selected John Robinson.

Let me take the few minutes that I have this morning to see if I can interconnect some dynamics of what faces us today in the world of trade.

One of the things that I am most proud of in my life, as Jim said, I once had a real job. I was in business. I have, in fact, used OPIC. I do understand the real world responsibilities and importance of Ex-Im. I had little companies. I started little companies. I did international business. I did not do as much as I had hoped, but, nonetheless, that is the way you learn.

I know what Americans are up against in the world of international commerce. I understand the problems and the challenges because I, too, was once there, and so not that I am any smarter than anyone else in this business, but I do bring somewhat a real-world experience base to what I am doing today. I am very pleased to be in the position to have an opportunity to help shape the renewal of the charter for Ex-Im as the new chairman on the Banking Subcommittee that has jurisdiction over Ex-Im, as well as my Subcommittee chairmanship on the Foreign Relations Committee that also deals with international monetary policy and trade and economic development.

Our first and most immediate assignment is to deal with a new charter, and make it relevant and bring it up to date and assure that Ex-Im has the resources it needs to fulfill its charter and fulfill its commitments, not because it is there, not because it is an established successful financial institution, but because it is relevant, it is real, it is important. It is part of a dynamic world that America, I fear, is losing ground in.

Not one of you this morning, unless you have been on Saturn and Pluto the last few days, is unaware of what is going on in China. What that does, it reminds us once again in very clear, unmistakable terms of how the world is still very unpredictable and very dangerous. So, like you, when I hear occasional conversation that leads us to, well, we do not need Ex-Im anymore, we do not need OPIC anymore, we do not need TDA anymore, why is the American Government into this business of commerce and trade and financing, helping guaranteeing, all the things that those agencies represent, why is that, the world is civilized, isn't it, the world is just fine, isn't it, no, no, it is not. The world is still very unpredictable.

As we reach out and connect the numbers, the very real numbers on what trade and our exports have meant to economic growth in this country--and you know them all. You know today, for example, that close to 30 percent of our $10-trillion gross domestic product comes from our total trade output. That number in 1950 was less than 10 percent, and it will continue to move in a very clear direction, upward I hope.

The future for America, the future for growth, the future for our children, the future for our entitlement programs, the future for every part of our life is trade. Not only the economic dynamic is so anchored by trade, but also our security, geopolitical parts of the bigger equation of how we deal with our allies and adversaries in this still-unpredictable world. It is interconnected.

So many of us have believed for a long time--and what is happening in China today does not help our efforts, necessarily--that the smarter way to deal with nations who do not share today our human right values, our individual liberties values, our democratic free-market values is too engaged, and partly that engagement is about trade. It is about building bridges. It is about commerce reaching into a society that is now totally closed in some cases.

Now, is it imperfect? Yes. But on the other side of that equation, of course, is the strong national security foundation and anchor that a nation must always have like the United States, and to have one without the other is not going to work.

So my point is that the completeness of this picture must be assessed as we look at all the pieces. So no longer can we make policy in vacuums of let's do some tax policy here, let's put a new prescription drug piece onto Medicare entitlements here, let's do a little trade here and do some foreign policy down here. It does not work that way. All 6 billion people in the world are interconnected, and we have ample evidence of that.

Go back to 1997, what happened in Thailand when many people thought that that was just a short-lived currency blip. It was a little more than a short-lived currency blip. What we have found in very unmistakable terms is that, in fact, not only is Asia, but the world is interconnected, and when currencies go down, when economies go down, regions are affected. Hemispheres are affected. The world is affected.

So one of the things that I will continue to try to present in both the Banking Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee where I have some opportunity as chairman of the two oversight subcommittees that have Ex-Im within our portfolio is to try to continue to impress upon my colleagues, Americans, that, in fact, this is all a complete picture; that to cut Export-Import's budget by 25 percent does not make any sense. It does not make any sense because all the good things that you are trying to achieve over here through foreign policy through all of the other reaches that we have into the world are being short-circuited by undercutting that effort by some of the very same agencies and institutions that can help promote what you are trying to do over here.

So we disconnect this. We disconnect Export-Import efforts and OPIC and TDA and other efforts with what we are trying to do over here. It is going to take some very dynamic focussed leadership.

It is very important for you in your particular roles--and I know there are many different roles and responsibilities represented here this morning--to help educate all of your spheres of influence to what I am saying, to what I am talking about, not that I am saying anything that is profound. I am not. Many of my colleagues have been at this a lot longer than I have and are far more articulate than I am and have been pushing this issue for longer than I have, but the fact is if we do not wake up in this country and understand that right now this great behemoth gulliver, the United States, is being nibbled away, and we are begin tied down a little bit every day. We are so big and so powerful and so dominant that we do not see that day to day.

But if you chart it out and see where we are losing ground as a result of, for example, export credit agencies in Canada and Germany and Japan, what they are doing to enhance their companies and their economies and their productivities, we are losing out. We are losing out there. Is that the most dominant part of the President or the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Treasury schedule every day? I doubt it.

I do not think the President probably wakes up every morning and asks for a report on Germany and Japan and Canada's ECAs. Maybe he does, but I doubt it. But somebody better be paying attention.

So this is like everything in life, an educational process, an informational process, a connecting process as to why Ex-Im is so important, and it is easy to be flippant. I hear it every day from many of my colleagues.

Corporate welfare. Well, of course, if anyone cares to take the time to analyze the numbers, they understand that does not really hold up when you look at how many small businesses are helped, how many secondary and tertiary supplier markets are increased, how many jobs that represents to my State of Nebraska, to people all over this country, and maybe the biggest part of this that we overlook, not just in this more focused area of trade, is standards.

Does anybody really doubt that the nations who capture market standards isn't going to control the market? I saw it in telecommunications, and one of the reasons the United States is behind now Europe with wireless telephony is because we did not put enough focus on that in the 1980s in trying to get in and establishing those standards for their future markets in telecommunications. That is another part that we somehow just glaze over, gloss over, jump over, and, again, we are so large and so powerful and dominant and rich, we do not see what is happening to us underneath.

Now, I probably will not have to ever deal with this in its most urgent form unless I have the ambition of Strom Thurmond; that is, to stay in the Senate until I am 150. He is only 50 years short of that, by the way. That is not bad. That is not my ambition, and I doubt that I would have much to say about that, anyway. But the next generation, the generation coming in behind us, they are the ones who are going to have to deal with this. They are the ones who are going to be confronted with our lack of discipline in management and focus and courage to do this right. Well, I would leave you with this last thought. It is going to take all of us, everyone in this room and your suppliers and your associates and, as I said earlier, each of our spheres of influence to try to educate our colleagues to the completeness of what we are about. There is no longer any debate about the importance of trade for the future of a nation.

The 21 civilizations of mankind that Arnold Toynbee [ph] wrote about years ago in a book called "Civilizations of Mankind" lay out very clearly each of those civilization challenges, and the one common denominator that anchored each of those civilizations Toynbee wrote about, he said, was something very simple, and it is the constant companion of all of us in the business of international trade. That is challenge and response. Challenge and response.

There is a constant challenge every day, every hour, from competitors, from new technology, to instability, to markets up and down, to financing, personalities. You never get it all right. Challenge and response, that is what makes the difference. That is what has made the difference, and we live in such a time.

I believe we are at a time in the history of man where we are right on the edge of doing more good for more people than the world has ever known, and when we look back 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, the astounding, astonishing advances that have been made in science and medicine, telecommunications, any discipline, any universe, it is astounding, almost unbelievable, but we have come to accept it to the point where we just shrug our shoulders.

Does anybody pay much attention anymore to what is going on in space? I doubt if you do. You may read a headline. You may see something on television, but big deal. Aren't we in space all the time? What is going on out there? I do not know. I am bored by it. So we just keep going, and we are not connecting all of that well enough, I believe, in the United States because we have lapsed in to a certain state of "well, that is just a given," and the rest of the world is not doing that. I do not need to tell any of you that. The rest of the world is not doing that.

These new nations that are now experiencing democracy and market economies, some for the first time ever in their history, some for the first time in 75 years or 50 years, they understand this moment in history. They understand this moment of opportunity, and they are taking advantage of it, as they should take advantage of it.

We created this. If there was ever any nation, one nation in the history of man who has done so much to create this incredible environment of increased standards and values and expectations, it has been this country, and what a tragedy it would be if we did not continue to fulfill the destiny of the course that we have been on for over 200 years, and much of that destiny will be determined, the outcome, by trade, by what you are doing.

As little an agency as Ex-Im is, as little an engine as it has, it is pulling a lot of cars uphill, and I pledge to you, I will do everything I can to help get Ex-Im back on a track where they do have the resources they need and where our policy-makers understand the relevancy of it and respect that relevancy and incorporate that relevancy into overall policy in this country for the good of this country and for the good of the world.

So thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to say hello and wish you well with your conference this morning and tomorrow.

I know Fred Bergsten is coming next. So you will hear from a real speaker, somebody who will be able to elucidate, enlighten, educate with his insightful commentaries.

Is that good enough, Fred, a good opening?

Thank you all very much.