POLITICAL EDUCATION, CONSERVATIVE ANALYSIS
POLITICS, SOCIETY, & THE SOVEREIGN STATE
Website of Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr
NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY OF
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
By President George W. Bush
VI.
IGNITE A NEW ERA OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC GROWTH
THROUGH FREE MARKETS & FREE TRADE
A strong world economy enhances our national
security by advancing prosperity and freedom in
the rest of the world. Economic growth supported
by free trade and free markets creates new jobs
and higher incomes. It allows people to lift their
lives out of poverty, spurs economic and legal
reform, and the fight against corruption, and it
reinforces the habits of liberty.
We will promote economic growth and
economic freedom beyond Americas shores. All
governments are responsible for creating their
own economic policies and responding to their
own economic challenges.We will use our
economic engagement with other countries to
underscore the benefits of policies that generate
higher productivity and sustained economic
growth, including:
- pro-growth legal and regulatory policies to
encourage business investment, innovation,
and entrepreneurial activity;
- tax policiesparticularly lower marginal tax
ratesthat improve incentives for work and
investment;
- rule of law and intolerance of corruption so
that people are confident that they will be
able to enjoy the fruits of their economic
endeavors;
- strong financial systems that allow capital to
be put to its most efficient use;
- sound fiscal policies to support business
activity;
- investments in health and education that
improve the well-being and skills of the
labor force and population as a whole; and
- free trade that provides new avenues for
growth and fosters the diffusion of technologies
and ideas that increase productivity
and opportunity.
The lessons of history are clear: market
economies, not command-and-control economies
with the heavy hand of government, are the best
way to promote prosperity and reduce poverty.
Policies that further strengthen market incentives
and market institutions are relevant for all
economiesindustrialized countries, emerging
markets, and the developing world.
A return to strong economic growth in Europe
and Japan is vital to U.S. national security interests.
We want our allies to have strong economies
for their own sake, for the sake of the global
economy, and for the sake of global security.
European efforts to remove structural barriers in
their economies are particularly important in this
regard, as are Japans efforts to end deflation and
address the problems of non-performing loans in
the Japanese banking system.We will continue to
use our regular consultations with Japan and our
European partnersincluding through the Group
of Seven (G-7)to discuss policies they are
adopting to promote growth in their economies
and support higher global economic growth.
Improving stability in emerging markets is also
key to global economic growth. International
flows of investment capital are needed to expand
the productive potential of these economies. These
flows allow emerging markets and developing
countries to make the investments that raise living
standards and reduce poverty. Our long-term
objective should be a world in which all countries
have investment-grade credit ratings that allow
them access to international capital markets and
to invest in their future.
We are committed to policies that will help
emerging markets achieve access to larger capital
flows at lower cost. To this end, we will continue
to pursue reforms aimed at reducing uncertainty
in financial markets.We will work actively with
other countries, the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and the private sector to implement the
G-7 Action Plan negotiated earlier this year for
preventing financial crises and more effectively
resolving them when they occur.
The best way to deal with financial crises is to
prevent them from occurring, and we have
encouraged the IMF to improve its efforts to do
so.We will continue to work with the IMF to
streamline the policy conditions for its lending
and to focus its lending strategy on achieving
economic growth through sound fiscal and
monetary policy, exchange rate policy, and
financial sector policy.
The concept of "free trade" arose as a moral
principle even before it became a pillar of
economics. If you can make something that others
value, you should be able to sell it to them. If
others make something that you value, you should
be able to buy it. This is real freedom, the freedom
for a personor a nationto make a living. To
promote free trade, the Unites States has developed
a comprehensive strategy:
- Seize the global initiative. The new global
trade negotiations we helped launch at Doha
in November 2001 will have an ambitious
agenda, especially in agriculture, manufacturing
and services, targeted for completion
in 2005. The United States has led the way in
completing the accession of China and a
democratic Taiwan to the World Trade
Organization.We will assist Russias
preparations to join the WTO.
- Press regional initiatives. The United States
and other democracies in the Western
Hemisphere have agreed to create the Free
Trade Area of the Americas, targeted for
completion in 2005. This year the United
States will advocate market-access negotiations
with its partners, targeted on
agriculture, industrial goods, services, investment,
and government procurement.We will
also offer more opportunity to the poorest
continent, Africa, starting with full use of
the preferences allowed in the African
Growth and Opportunity Act, and leading
to free trade.
- Move ahead with bilateral free trade
agreements. Building on the free trade
agreement with Jordan enacted in 2001,
the Administration will work this year to
complete free trade agreements with Chile
and Singapore. Our aim is to achieve free
trade agreements with a mix of developed
and developing countries in all regions of
the world. Initially, Central America,
Southern Africa, Morocco, and Australia will
be our principal focal points.
- Renew the executive-congressional partnership.
Every administrations trade strategy
depends on a productive partnership with
Congress. After a gap of 8 years, the
Administration reestablished majority
support in the Congress for trade liberalization
by passing Trade Promotion Authority
and the other market opening measures for
developing countries in the Trade Act of
2002. This Administration will work with
Congress to enact new bilateral, regional,
and global trade agreements that will be
concluded under the recently passed Trade
Promotion Authority.
- Promote the connection between trade and
development. Trade policies can help developing
countries strengthen property rights,
competition, the rule of law, investment, the
spread of knowledge, open societies, the efficient
allocation of resources, and regional
integrationall leading to growth, opportunity,
and confidence in developing countries.
The United States is implementing The
Africa Growth and Opportunity Act to
provide market-access for nearly all goods
produced in the 35 countries of sub-
Saharan Africa.We will make more use of
this act and its equivalent for the Caribbean
Basin and continue to work with multilateral
and regional institutions to help poorer
countries take advantage of these opportunities.
Beyond market access, the most
important area where trade intersects with
poverty is in public health.We will ensure
that the WTO intellectual property rules are
flexible enough to allow developing nations
to gain access to critical medicines for
extraordinary dangers like HIV/AIDS,
tuberculosis, and malaria.
- Enforce trade agreements and laws against
unfair practices. Commerce depends on the
rule of law; international trade depends on
enforceable agreements. Our top priorities
are to resolve ongoing disputes with the
European Union, Canada, and Mexico and
to make a global effort to address new technology,
science, and health regulations that
needlessly impede farm exports and
improved agriculture. Laws against unfair
trade practices are often abused, but the
international community must be able to
address genuine concerns about government
subsidies and dumping. International
industrial espionage which undermines fair
competition must be detected and deterred.
- Help domestic industries and workers adjust.
There is a sound statutory frame- work for
these transitional safeguards which we have
used in the agricultural sector and which we
are using this year to help the American steel
industry. The benefits of free trade depend
upon the enforcement of fair trading practices.
These safeguards help ensure that the
benefits of free trade do not come at the
expense of American workers. Trade adjustment
assistance will help workers adapt to
the change and dynamism of open markets.
- Protect the environment and workers. The
United States must foster economic growth
in ways that will provide a better life along
with widening prosperity.We will incorporate
labor and environmental concerns into
U.S. trade negotiations, creating a healthy
network between multilateral environmental
agreements with the WTO, and use
the International Labor Organization, trade
preference programs, and trade talks to
improve working conditions in conjunction
with freer trade.
- Enhance energy security. We will strengthen
our own energy security and the shared
prosperity of the global economy by
working with our allies, trading partners,
and energy producers to expand the sources
and types of global energy supplied, especially
in the Western Hemisphere, Africa,
Central Asia, and the Caspian region.We
will also continue to work with our partners
to develop cleaner and more energy efficient
technologies.
Economic growth should be accompanied by
global efforts to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations
associated with this growth, containing
them at a level that prevents dangerous human
interference with the global climate. Our overall
objective is to reduce Americas greenhouse gas
emissions relative to the size of our economy,
cutting such emissions per unit of economic
activity by 18 percent over the next 10 years, by
the year 2012. Our strategies for attaining this goal
will be to:
- remain committed to the basic U.N.
Framework Convention for international
cooperation;
- obtain agreements with key industries to cut
emissions of some of the most potent
greenhouse gases and give transferable
credits to companies that can show real cuts;
- develop improved standards for measuring
and registering emission reductions;
- promote renewable energy production and
clean coal technology, as well as nuclear
power (which produces no greenhouse gas
emissions0, while also improving fuel
economy for U.S. cars and trucks;
- increase spending on research and new
conservation technologies, to a total of
$4.5 billionthe largest sum being spent on
climate change by any country in the world
and a $700 million increase over last years
budget; and
- assist developing countries, especially the
major greenhouse gas emitters such as China
and India, so that they will have the tools
and resources to join this effort and be able
to grow along a cleaner and better path.
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NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY,
Infrastructure of Democracy
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