Above all, if we are to pay for our commitments abroad, we must expand our
exports. Our businessmen must be export conscious and export competitive.
Our tax policies must spur modernization of our plants--our wage and price
gains must be consistent with productivity to hold the line on prices--our
export credit and promotion campaigns for American industries must continue
to expand.
But the greatest challenge of all is posed by the growth of the European
Common Market. Assuming the accession of the United Kingdom, there will
arise across the Atlantic a trading partner behind a single external tariff
similar to ours with an economy which nearly equals our own. Will we in
this country adapt our thinking to these new prospects and patterns--or
will we wait until events have passed us by?
This is the year to decide. The Reciprocal Trade Act is expiring. We need a
new law--a wholly new approach--a bold new instrument of American trade
policy. Our decision could well affect the unity of the West, the course of
the Cold War, and the economic growth of our Nation for a generation to
come.
If we move decisively, our factories and farms can increase their sales to
their richest, fastest-growing market. Our exports will increase. Our
balance of payments position will improve. And we will have forged across
the Atlantic a trading partnership with vast resources for freedom.
If, on the other hand, we hang back in deference to local economic
pressures, we will find ourselves cut off from our major allies.
Industries--and I believe this is most vital--industries will move their
plants and jobs and capital inside the walls of the Common Market, and
jobs, therefore, will be lost here in the United States if they cannot
otherwise compete for its consumers. Our farm surpluses--our balance of
trade, as you all know, to Europe, the Common Market, in farm products, is
nearly three or four to one in our favor, amounting to one of the best
earners of dollars in our balance of payments structure, and without
entrance to this Market, without the ability to enter it, our farm
surpluses will pile up in the Middle West, tobacco in the South, and other
commodities, which have gone through Western Europe for 15 years. Our
balance of payments position will worsen. Our consumers will lack a wider
choice of goods at lower prices. And millions of American workers--whose
jobs depend on the sale or the transportation or the distribution of
exports or imports, or whose jobs will be endangered by the movement of our
capital to Europe, or whose jobs can be maintained only in an expanding
economy--these millions of workers in your home States and mine will see
their real interests sacrificed.
Members of the Congress: The United States did not rise to greatness by
waiting for others to lead. This Nation is the world's foremost
manufacturer, farmer, banker, consumer, and exporter. The Common Market is
moving ahead at an economic growth rate twice ours. The Communist economic
offensive is under way. The opportunity is ours--the initiative is up to
us--and I believe that 1962 is the time.
To seize that initiative, I shall shortly send to the Congress a new
five-year Trade Expansion Action, far-reaching in scope but designed with
great care to make certain that its benefits to our people far outweigh any
risks. The bill will permit the gradual elimination of tariffs here in the
United States and in the Common Market on those items in which we together
supply 80 percent of the world's trade--mostly items in which our own
ability to compete is demonstrated by the fact that we sell abroad, in
these items, substantially more than we import. This step will make it
possible for our major industries to compete with their counterparts in
Western Europe for access to European consumers.
On other goods the bill will permit a gradual reduction of duties up to 50
percent--permitting bargaining by major categories--and provide for
appropriate and tested forms of assistance to firms and employees adjusting
to import competition. We are not neglecting the safeguards provided by
peril points, an escape clause, or the National Security Amendment. Nor are
we abandoning our non-European friends or our traditional "most-favored
nation" principle. On the contrary, the bill will provide new encouragement
for their sale of tropical agricultural products, so important to our
friends in Latin America, who have long depended upon the European market,
who now find themselves faced with new challenges which we must join with
them in overcoming.
Concessions, in this bargaining, must of course be reciprocal, not
unilateral. The Common Market will not fulfill its own high promise unless
its outside tariff walls are low. The dangers of restriction or timidity in
our own policy have counterparts for our friends in Europe. For together we
face a common challenge: to enlarge the prosperity of free men
everywhere--to build in partnership a new trading community in which all
free nations may gain from the productive energy of free competitive
effort.
These various elements in our foreign policy lead, as I have said, to a
single goal--the goal of a peaceful world of free and independent states.
This is our guide for the present and our vision for the future--a free
community of nations, independent but interdependent, uniting north and
south, east and west, in one great family of man, outgrowing and
transcending the hates and fears that rend our age.
We will not reach that goal today, or tomorrow. We may not reach it in our
own lifetime. But the quest is the greatest adventure of our century. We
sometimes chafe at the burden of our obligations, the complexity of our
decisions, the agony of our choices. But there is no comfort or security
for us in evasion, no solution in abdication, no relief in
irresponsibility.
A year ago, in assuming the tasks of the Presidency, I said that few
generations, in all history, had been granted the role of being the great
defender of freedom in its hour of maximum danger. This is our good
fortune; and I welcome it now as I did a year ago. For it is the fate of
this generation--of you in the Congress and of me as President--to live
with a struggle we did not start, in a world we did not make. But the
pressures of life are not always distributed by choice. And while no
nation has ever faced such a challenge, no nation has ever been so ready
to seize the burden and the glory of freedom.
And in this high endeavor, may God watch over the United States of America.
***
State of the Union Address
John F. Kennedy
January 14, 1963
Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 88th Congress:
I congratulate you all--not merely on your electoral victory but on your
selected role in history. For you and I are privileged to serve the great
Republic in what could be the most decisive decade in its long history. The
choices we make, for good or ill, may well shape the state of the Union for
generations yet to come.
Little more than 100 weeks ago I assumed the office of President of the
United States. In seeking the help of the Congress and our countrymen, I
pledged no easy answers. I pledged--and asked--only toil and dedication.
These the Congress and the people have given in good measure. And today,
having witnessed in recent months a heightened respect for our national
purpose and power--having seen the courageous calm of a united people in
a perilous hour--and having observed a steady improvement in the
opportunities and well-being of our citizens--I can report to you that
the state of this old but youthful Union, in the 175th year of its life,
is good.
In the world beyond our borders, steady progress has been made in building
a world of order. The people of West Berlin remain both free and secure. A
settlement, though still precarious, has been reached in Laos. The
spearpoint of aggression has been blunted in Viet-Nam. The end of agony may
be in sight in the Congo. The doctrine of troika is dead. And, while danger
continues, a deadly threat has been removed in Cuba.
At home, the recession is behind us. Well over a million more men and women
are working today than were working 2 years ago. The average factory
work week is once again more than 40 hours; our industries are turning out
more goods than ever before; and more than half of the manufacturing
capacity that lay silent and wasted 100 weeks ago is humming with
activity.
In short, both at home and abroad, there may now be a temptation to relax.
For the road has been long, the burden heavy, and the pace consistently
urgent.
But we cannot be satisfied to rest here. This is the side of the hill, not
the top. The mere absence of war is not peace. The mere absence of
recession is not growth. We have made a beginning--but we have only begun.
Now the time has come to make the most of our gains--to translate the
renewal of our national strength into the achievement of our national
purpose.