Edward Luce, the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times interviewed Hillary Clinton in Washington on Friday (Nov 30) and published the transcript in today's paper: Full transcript: Hillary Clinton interview.
Here's a summary of her remarks on trade and related issues:
- Asked about energy prices, she focused (a) on the supply side and discussed measures to pressure OPEC to increase production and reduce prices and (b) to a lesser extent on measures to reduce domestic U.S. demand. No mention of the demand side pressures from newly developing countries.
- She used a question about the dollar to expand on the problems of income inequality and of the economic difficulties of the middle class. She was concerned that export benefits from the decline in the value of the dollar were not going to work themselves through to the middle class. She did allude to getting control of "our fiscal destiny" in the context of the dollar questions.
- She reiterated her call for a review of existing trade agreements, and her commitment to looking at each agreement individually. The agreement with Peru met her standards, "because it has the kind of strong labour and environmental provisions that I’ve long called for. And it helps to level the playing field for American workers because as things stand most Peruvian goods already enter America tariff-free but the tariff that are attached to most American goods entering Peru make them less competitive."
- The agreement with South Korea does not because it doesn't do enough for Detroit, and she has reservations about enforcing an agreement with the South Koreans, "My husband’s administration tried to enforce a memorandum of agreement that they entered into with the south Koreans about opening up their market to American autos and it just didn’t happen."
- She noted, "We have benefited through most of the 20th century from trade. It has helped to raise American standards of living, it has helped to create jobs."
- She didn't say much about Doha, but did mention (citing Paul Samuelson) that she wondered if the theory of comparative advantage was still relevant to the 21st Century. Simon Lester and commenters discuss the Samuelson citation. "And I am concerned by some of the provisions that would prevent countries from for example enforcing stronger environmental and worker safety rules under the WTO. I think we have to take a hard look at this and do it in the right way and that is what I am proposing to do."
- She was asked about sovereign wealth funds. She answered that foreign investment was important for the U.S. and emphasized her concern was with the transparency of sovereign wealth fund investments. She wants to see the IMF and World Bank draft transparency rules "so we have more information about what the funds are investing in and how they are being managed. That is my principal concern – to increase transparency so that there is a clear understanding of where the funds are coming from, what the funds are being invested in, what the potential downsides might be of essentially having a foreign government control certain assets in our country."
Luce alluded a speech she gave on the economy in Knoxville on November 19. Here's a transcript of this speech: ECONOMY: Policy Address on America's Economic Challenges. Here's her economic plan (apparently released in conjunction with the Knoxville speech): Clinton Outlines Plan To Address America's Economic Challenges. Something for a future post.
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