REMARKS AS
PREPARED FOR DELIVERY
U.S. SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION RODNEY E. SLATER
AMERICAN CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN BRAZIL LUNCHEON
RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
OCTOBER 20, 1999
On behalf of President Clinton and Vice President Gore, I am very pleased to join Minister Eliseu Padilha in signing this historic agreement.
I thank Administrator Clyde Hart and his dedicated staff at the Maritime Administration, Dr. Armando Fregeido and the members of the Brazilian maritime delegation for their extraordinary leadership in negotiating this agreement.
I would also like to thank the U.S. Department of State, the American Embassy in Brazil, and the U.S. maritime industry, including both carriers and shippers, for their strong support throughout the negotiating process.
Today’s signing will go far to improve maritime trade and competitive access for national-flag carriers of both the United States and Brazil.
This agreement provides the foundation for strong bilateral maritime relationships and for continued efforts to further open shipping markets in the U.S.-South America trade.
Free trade and fair competition is the most effective way to encourage efficient shipping services at favorable costs. Such shipping conditions will only increase foreign trade and enhance the growth of our respective economies.
Our agenda is not only about strengthening maritime relations between our two nations, it is about the economic future of our diverse peoples.
Every day, the world grows smaller and closer together. In fact, we are fast becoming a world without borders. And it seems we grow closer by adopting more liberal rules of investment and trade, rules, like today’s agreement that, are creating trade opportunities to benefit all of our people.
President Clinton believes that a strong, properly constructed global trading system is good for all the nations of the world. He believes that we can make our individual economies even stronger and make open trade an even greater force for peace and prosperity in the new century. I stand with him in that belief.
Transportation is the crucial link -- it is the tie that binds. Open and liberal transportation and trade agreements are key to expanding and strengthening that global trading system. Clearly, we are making great strides today with the signing of this Bilateral Maritime Agreement.
Working together, moving from strength to strength, we are building a strong and dynamic U.S.-Brazil partnership for the new century and the new millennium.
I am delighted with this opportunity to brief the American Chamber in Brazil.
The Chamber here has worked diligently to promote commerce and improve relations between our two nations since 1919. And I believe this week’s U.S. transportation and trade mission to Brazil, Chile and Peru will advance that high purpose.
We have called this a "transportation and trade mission."
At each stop, we are meeting with government leaders responsible for transportation programs and policies. And as the maritime agreement we just signed demonstrates, we are not just talking -- we are taking action.
As part of our mission, we are also meeting with U.S. companies that are well positioned to supply transportation products and services in Latin America. However, they need an equal playing field to compete. We are here to speak on their behalf.
And we are also here to listen and to learn.
After visiting with Minister of Transportation Padilha and other senior officials in Brazilia, I had the great privilege of meeting with President Cardoso yesterday afternoon. I listened. I learned. Our meeting went very well. I think it will bear good fruit in due season.
The first official stop on our mission to Brazil was Curitiba. I was deeply impressed with Curitiba’s low-coast but highly effective. The United States has much to learn about Bus Rapid Transit and community development projects from the Curitiba model. We liked what we saw. Our host were interested in how the latest U.S. technology could make the system even better.
U.S. companies can help Curitiba with clean propulsion technologies that reduce pollution, electronic "smart cards" that simplify fare collection. New Geographic Positioning Satellite Systems could help Curitiba manage traffic in real time by tracking the exact location of every transit vehicle.
We concluded the day, by signing a letter of intent pledging us to work together.
I came away feeling our mission was off to a great start. I can’t emphasize enough how important it is that these conversations are "win-win" conversations for all participants. Sustainable development" requires sustainable agreements.
In addition to bilateral transportation and trade issues, our mission also has a broader purpose. In just five years the western hemisphere will need a transportation system for our hemisphere that is able to support the free trade zone of the Americas our elected Chiefs of State promised to create at the Miami Summit of the Americas.
The economic potential of a hemispheric free trade agreement is enormous. Even without an agreement, the dollar value of U.S. exports to Latin America grew at an annual rate of 13 percent between 1986 and 1996, a rate more than three times that of U.S. exports to Europe.
By the year 2010, the Western Hemisphere will be a larger market for the U.S. than Western Europe and the Pacific Rim combined. Our 800 million people already generate over $ 9 trillion in economic activity.
To support this massive growth we will need the kind of transportation system envisioned by last December’s Western Hemisphere Transportation Ministerial in New Orleans: "A seamless network of highways, rail lines, shipping routes and aviation corridors stretching from the Yukon to Tierra del Fuego.
I strongly believe that aviation will be a driving force for this emerging network in the new millennium. Tomorrow in Santiago, I will join President Eduardo Frei to an Open Skies Aviation Agreement between the governments of the United States and Chile.
We expect this aviation agreement to generate more service and lower fares in the U.S.-Chile market and to inaugurate direct service between more cities in both countries. We also expect this agreement to stimulate competition by encouraging new carriers to enter the marketplace.
With this signing, Chile will join 35 other nations, worldwide, that have negotiated open skies agreements with the United States.
We would like to conclude an Open Skies agreement with Brazil. The U.S. enjoys good civil aviation relations here. And with nearly three million passengers in 1998, Brazil is the largest of the U.S.-South American passenger markets. And despite this past year’s economic slowdown in Brazil, several U.S. airlines are eager to expand service here.
What are the prospects for a U.S.-Brazil Open Skies Agreement? Let me just say that this is on my agenda here this week.
While I am excited by our new bilateral agreement with Chile and the possibility of an eventual agreement with Brazil, our ultimate hope is to replace the thousands of bilateral aviation markets created by the existing system with a single, open, international aviation market.
The United States is therefore calling upon all our Open Skies aviation partners to join us for an aviation conference in Chicago this coming December to address what comes after Open Skies? in the 21st century.
The connection between transportation and trade is clear. As President Clinton has said, "An efficient, safe and well-integrated transportation system is crucial to the Western Hemisphere’s continued growth and prosperity."
The economic logic of the case for free trade in this hemisphere is also clear.
We are neighbors; we will always be neighbors. It’s a matter of geography.
This logic motivated Simon Bolivar and Benito Juarez to promote better hemispheric trade relations during the first half of the 19th century.
In his speech to the American Chamber in Sao Paulo last year, Ambassador Fisher, pointed out that the United States was already Brazil’s largest export market back in 1876 when Dom Pedro II came to Washington to help us celebrate our Independence Centennial.
U.S. Secretary of State James Blaine actually convened a hemispheric conference in Washington, whose goal was hemispheric free trade, back in 1889.
However, these 19th century hopes for free trade in our hemisphere were never realized.
And during the 20th century, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt’s "Good Neighbor Policy" and President John Kennedy’s "Alliance for Progress" also failed to live up to our mutual expectations.
What makes us think that our current efforts at the dawn of a new century and a new millennium will enable us to move to higher heights where earlier efforts fell short of the mark?
The short answer is that today, unlike yesterday, we share a common vision and common values as well as geographic proximity:
As President Cardoso said to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York a few years ago, "The values that Brazilian society has elevated in a desire for reform [include] the consolidation of democratic institutions; a market economy; respect for human rights; the non-proliferation of nuclear arms; and respect for the environment."
These shared values make a new, enduring, equal partnership possible. However, success is not guaranteed. The negotiations to create a hemispheric free trade zone are demanding. And some of the most important negotiations must take place within our respective nations, as well as among them.
In the United States we still do not have a consensus on the way forward with trade, especially with respect to environmental and labor issues.
Under President Clinton’s leadership we are attempting to build a consensus in favor of free trade, in advanced next month’s historic World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. I was in Washington State earlier this month to participate in to explain the WTO meeting to a cross-section of community groups.
I believe we will finally succeed in building a consensus in favor of free and fair trade because it’s in the best interest of everyone.
The success of these two regional arrangements have been dramatic:
Since the 1991 Treaty of Asuncion, intra-Mercosul trade has increased over 400 percent. And as of last year, Mercosul’s exports to the rest of the world had increased by over $20 billion.
With NAFTA in place, the United States more than doubled its annual trade to Mexico, reaching $198 billion annually in 1998. Our yearly trade with Canada exceeds $300 billion.
As President Clinton said at last year’s Santiago Summit, the nations of this hemisphere are now in a position to create a "New partnership for a new century...to grow in freedom and opportunity and cooperation...[so that] the Americas can be a model for all the world in the 21st century."
One of the hemisphere’s greatest living writers, Carlos Fuentes has said. "So many barriers that used to keep us apart have disappeared. We are more and more united.
Unity of vision, pursued with vigilance is the firm foundation upon which we can move from strength to strength, to build a community of nations in which no one is left out of the circle of prosperity.
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