MODERATOR: After the debate, the candidates will have an opportunity to make a closing
statement.
So, President Bush, I think you said it earlier, let's get it on.
PRESIDENT GEORGE HERBERT WALKER BUSH: Let's go.
MODERATOR: And I think the first question is over here.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Yes, I'd like to direct my question to Mr. Perot.
What will you do as President to open foreign markets to fair competition from American
business, and to stop unfair competition here at home from foreign countries so that we
can bring jobs back to the United States?
PEROT: That's right at the top of my agenda.
We've shipped millions of jobs overseas and we have a strange situation because we have
a process in Washington where after you've served for a while you cash in and become
a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month; then take a leave, work on Presidential campaigns,
make sure you got good contacts, and then go back out.
Now if you just want to get down to brass tacks, the first thing you ought to do is
get all these folks who've got these one-way trade agreements that we've negotiated over
the years and say,
"Fellows, we'll take the same deal we gave you." And they'll gridlock right at that point
because,
for example, we've got international competitors who simply could not unload their cars off
the ships if they had to comply -- you see, if it was a two-way street -- just couldn't
do it.
We have got to stop sending jobs overseas.
To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple:
If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory
South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young --
let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature work force
-- pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care -- that's the most expensive
single element in making a car -- have no environmental controls, no pollution controls
and no retirement,
and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound
going south.
So we -- if the people send me to Washington the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000-page
agreement and make sure it's a two-way street.
One last part here -- I decided i was dumb and didn't understand it so I called the Who's
Who of the folks who've been around it and I said, "Why won't everybody go South?"
They say, "It'd be disruptive." I said, "For how long?"
I finally got them up from 12 to 15 years. And I said, "well, how does it stop being
disruptive?"
And that is when their jobs come up from a dollar an hour to six dollars an hour,
and ours go down to six dollars an hour, and then it's leveled again.
But in the meantime, you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. We've got to cut
it out.
MODERATOR: Thank you Mr. Perot.