BUCHANAN: I told you in my column a few years
ago, if the polls don't get any better, I'll be coming
back talking to you again soon.
I thought I'd talk to you today briefly before I went to
your questions about one of the most important issues in this
Congress, and it is the issue that has a lot of people
here in Washington, D.C., tremendously agitated,
that's the issue of permanent MFN for China --
permanent normal trade relations.
Now I am opposed to that and because I am
opposed I have been called anti-free trade.
Now this is false. The United States of America has,
since its inception, been among the greatest trading
nations on Earth.
However, there are some cases, I think, where the
situation is not as good as it should be. Let me take
the case of Canada. We got a free trade agreement.
I'm 100 percent for that free trade agreement with
Canada.
With the European Union, if we get free and fair
trade -- reciprocal trade, I'm for that.
Now why am I opposed to permanent MFN for
communist China? Because Beijing does not deserve
permanent MFN. Beijing does not deserve, at this
point, permanent, unrestricted access to the greatest
consumer market on Earth, the $8 trillion American
market from which they derived last year $70 billion
in a trade surplus.
Let me give you the reasons why I'm against it.
First,
the People's Republic of China, which I visited with
Richard Nixon back in 1972 -- I'm one of 10
surviving members of that official delegation -- the
People's Republic of China is not a free trader in its
trade with the United States of America.
Beijing buys 1 percent of America's exports, the
same amount China bought at the time of the open
door policy 100 years ago; the same mount that
China bought in 1930 before the Japanese invasion.
They buy 1 percent of America's exports, and we
take 40 percent of their exports.
That's why, in the last eight or nine years, Beijing has
piled up a $350 billion total trade surplus with the
United States of America.
So they're not free traders, and they're not fair
traders.
But more important than that, let's ask ourselves
what they're using that trade surplus for, that $70
billion they earned last year. In the last three or four
years, maybe a little bit longer, Beijing has conducted
a double-digit military buildup -- in other words, the
increase in its defense spending has gone up by
double-digits: 10, 15, 20 percent a year.
Ask yourself why, when the United States of
America has been building down its defenses, and
virtually every country in the wake of our Cold War
victory has been building its defenses, why this
military buildup on the mainland of China? What are
they buying?
One thing they're buying is Soviet destroyers which
carry what are known as Sunburn (sp) missiles, which
are cruise missiles which can go, skim the water
surface, at twice the speed of sound.
Against what ships are those missiles directed?
There's only one fleet out there in the Western
Pacific and that's our American 7th Fleet.
They're buying super-computers and converting them
to military use. They're building up M-9 and M-ll
missiles, which are short-range missiles, 100 to 200
miles, opposite Taiwan.
Now at the last crisis Mr. Clinton faced in 1996,
China had 50 of these missiles opposite Taiwan, and
you recall, they fired several off the coast of Taiwan,
and America used its aircraft carriers basically to
face Beijing down.
They have now built up that missile force, according
to the Pentagon, to 200 missiles opposite Taiwan, and
they're building to a force of 650 opposite Taiwan.
What is the purpose of these missiles, if not to
intimidate or wage war against our friends on
Taiwan?
In addition, they're pointing rockets now at the
United States of America, rockets that contain within
them technology made in the USA, thanks to some
corrupt businessmen in this country, or stupid or
incompetent businessmen, who transferred this
technology.
I mean, it got so bad even Jay Leno, after the
Chinese raged about the Americans hitting their
embassy in Belgrade, the Chinese wanted to know
how our missiles could have done that, and Jay Leno
asked, If the Chinese don't know how our missiles
work, who does?
I mean, this -- there's a humorous aspect to this, and
to the idea that the Chinese Communists were
polluting American politics by pouring all this money
into our campaigns.
But there's a serious component to it as well.
This morning we read in the Washington Times that
the Chinese conveyed missile technology to Libya,
their 300-mile missiles. Now this is all recent. This is
wild. America is pouring all this money -- this is wild
-- we have been giving then temporary Most Favored Nation.
And finally, there's the issue of human rights. You
can pick up the papers in the morning and read about
the Falun Gong, this martial arts society, being
persecuted; you can read about Catholic priests and
bishops who are faithful to Rome being locked up
and stilled; you can read about the Tibetans, the
cultural genocide that's going on there; and you can
read about sterilization and abortion policies: the one
couple, one child policy, whereby women who happen to be pregnant with a
second child -- maybe married -- are taken out,
forced to undergo an abortion and sterilized.
Now these are Third Reich policies.
This is what we heard out of Germany in the 1930s,
and they're imposing this on women in China.
And for who? Who is their main benefactor? It is
you and me. Every time you and I go down to the
mall, buy something and come home and have it
made in China, we're subsidizing this. We're
subsidizing this threat to our own country. We're
subsidizing this threat to friends of ours on Taiwan.
Now the Republican Party has gone along with this
-- not only gone along with it, they're more
enthusiastic than Bill Clinton, and they say they're the
party of Reagan. Let me read you a statement
Ronald Reagan made with regards to the Soviet
empire on November 13, 1982 -- this is the president
I worked for in the White House.
"We Americans helped the Soviets avoid some hard
economic choices by providing preferential terms of
trade; by allowing them to acquire militarily relevant
technology by providing them a market for their
energy resources. By giving such preferential
treatment," Mr. Reagan said, "we've added to our
own problems, creating a situation where we have to
spend more money on our defense to keep up against the
Soviet capabilities that we help to create."
That's the Ronald Reagan I worked for. That Ronald
Reagan did not grant permanent MFN to the Soviet
Union. That Ronald Reagan did not bring the Soviet
Union into GATT. No, Ronald Reagan practiced a
policy of denial of all sorts of strategic materials to
the Soviet Union until that empire collapsed, and he
won the Cold War without firing a shot. That was
the party of Ronald Reagan. Today's Republican
Party is a party of detente, a party of appeasement.
Now let me suggest that even if we deny China
permanent MFN this year, nothing's going to be lost.
Republicans can vote for one more year extension of
temporary MFN. They'll come in here and tell you,
"Well, the Europeans will get in the market". But the
Europeans have rejected the deal that Charlene
Barshefsky brought home from Beijing. The
Europeans said, "It's not good enough for us". So we
lose nothing by just simply voting a one-year
extension if that's what they want to do.
Why won't Republicans do it? Why not on hard
political terms don't they do it, simply to administer a
defeat for Clinton, vote one more year of MFN and
then go into the next year? I'll tell you why; because
Mr. Tom Donahue (ph), U.S. Chamber of
Commerce, said as soon as that deal was cut any
congressman that votes against this does so at his
peril. The Business Roundtable wants this. It's the
number one priority. The Republican Party is going to
get $250 million in soft money this year from big
business. If they vote "no" on permanent MFN they know they're liable to hold their next big gala at Motel 6.
So it is big money that's talking. It's not the old party
of principle that helped win this Cold War. It's not
the party I belonged to and I loved and worked for
for 30 years. That's one of the reasons why I left it,
because it doesn't stand for what it stood for. You
know, the Republicans will say, "It's not the money, it's
the principle of the thing." And as someone once said,
If anyone tells you, "It's not the money, it's the
principle of the thing," you can be pretty sure it's the
money.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
Thank you very much and I'd be delighted to take
your questions, and I hope you did well with the
postal authorities that were in here a little while ago.
I used to write editorials out of St. Louis. I knew
how my publisher -- I don't know if any of you knew
old Dick Amberg (ph) a long time ago. Quite a
crusty old gentleman. Actually, he seemed old; he
was younger than I am now.
(LAUGHTER)
He used to talk about that all the time.
Yes, sir, go ahead.
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE)
BUCHANAN: All right. First off, with the Reform
Party, my rival, Jesse Ventura, said it was a deeply
dysfunctional party that he had found. But since he's
left it, it's been functioning very, very well.
You read about our fist-fight in Nashville. Well,
every state I go to we have something of a battle.
I'm going out to Indiana tomorrow, to Indianapolis.
But in truth, we are moving, advancing on that
nomination, and you have to do it state by state. And
there's some resistance in a number of states, and
when we go in, we will tell the state, "We don't want
to throw out your leaders of the party, but we do
want to win the delegates." And if they go along with
us and cut us a deal, we'll take the delegates and
they can have all the party positions. Where there's
resistance, we have to go in and do battle.
And so, you're going to read about these 50 state
fights almost until -- until we get to Long Beach, and
by then, as I said, I believe this party will have all the
unison and cohesion of the Rockettes at Radio City
Music Hall.
Why didn't we want to go to Long Beach? It's not so
much -- there are problems with Long Beach, in that
there's a number of other conventions in the hall,
access is tougher in the convention site. But mainly,
the Buchanan campaign -- we had the idea that we
might take it down to Tennessee and the Grand Ole
Opry, and come away as, sort of, a very
middle-American, country-music type thing. It was
the attractions, frankly, of the Nashville Grand Ole
Opry that outdid Long Beach, at least in our
estimation.
Yes, sir?
QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) My question is do you
see any real attitude, on the part of the U.S. and the
current administration as far as the one policy, two
policy choice...
BUCHANAN: One China, two China.
QUESTION: ... and -- yes, one China, two China,
and how would you establish a more distinct policy?
BUCHANAN: All right, with regard to the
administration, Mr. Clinton has already established
the idea, and he said so in Beijing -- and I thought it
was a mistake -- that he agreed with the three no's:
no independence for Taiwan, no Taiwan in any
international organization -- although I believe they're
going to bring them into the WTO -- and one other
no; I forget exactly what it was.
My belief on what's going to happen is this: the
Chinese communists do not at present have the
military wherewithal to invade and overrun Taiwan.
They simply don't have it. They don't have the sealift,
they don't have the navy, they don't have the air
force. If the Chinese are going to use military force
-- and I think that would be stupid -- they will grab
one of the tiny off-shore islands, which are a mile or
a half-mile off the China coast, in order to demoralize
Taiwan or humiliate the United States.
I think that would be a mistake for China, because it
would force Congress, basically, to do what it ought
to do right now, which is deny permanent MFN, and
it would create a crisis for Mr. Clinton.
I think the problem we face with China is down the
road. They're building to 650 missiles. Relatively
speaking, our power is diminishing nationally, theirs is
growing, and they see themselves as the wave of the
future. So I think the problem is going to hit us down
the road.
If I were in the White House right now, I would
move at a point of maximum American leverage,
which is right now. The truth is, the United States
purchases from China, which last year were $82
billion, are equal to their entire economic growth.
More than that, 8 (ph) percent of their economy, all
of their hard currency. If you simply put the same
tariffs on Chinese-made goods as they put on us, you
would sink their currency, and their economy would
tumble and they would be in an economic crisis.
And so I would tell the Chinese right now, Look, we
don't want conflict, we don't want a cold war, we
don't want a hot war, we had all those, but we can't
let you build up and continue what you're doing. And
if you don't behave and stop this buildup of missiles
aimed at us and Taiwan, we're going to put the same
tariffs on you as you put on us, and all our purchases
will shift to free Asia, Mexico and the United States,
and your economy will (inaudible). And I think you
ought to do it right now.
Secondly, you ought to sell Taiwan the defensive
weapons it needs; no offensive weapons. Don't tell
the Taiwanese, We can't go along and we cannot let
another country, even a friend, have control over
whether or not the United States goes to war, which
is what happened in World War II.
BUCHANAN: And I think you tell the Taiwanese,
As long as you don't declare independence, we will
provide you with the defensive weapons you need to
deal with China.
Yes?
QUESTION: I'm wondering why should college-age
students vote for you and why should they vote in the
next election?
BUCHANAN: Well, that's the question of
why I'm running as a Reform Party candidate. I
believe both major parties have become really
political instruments of the Fortune 500 when it
comes to trade policy and other issues, both of them.
Both are interventionist, globalist in nature. Mr. Bush
and Mr. McCain, as well as most of the other leading
Republicans, supported what I think was an illegal,
unjust and immoral war in the Balkans.
I think both parties are supporting a foreign policy of
interventionism which is not ultimately sustainable on
a defense budget of 3 percent of GDP. I believe that
peace requires us to adopt more traditional American
foreign policy now that we've won the Cold War:
dissolve these Cold War-alliances, get American
troops out of places where there are no threats to
vital American interests, and keep your generation
out of future wars. That's one.
Secondly, while I don't know that it's college
students, I believe the working men and women of
this country who don't go to college, the individuals
who, at 18, leave high school and get married, as half
of them did when I went to high school, that they got
to have access to good, high-paying jobs that will enable
them to buy a home at 25 or 26 years old. And those
are the industrial and manufacturing jobs that carry
health insurance that are being shipped abroad by
agreements like NAFTA and GATT and all the rest
of them. They do an injustice to our working people.
I've always believed that Americans, either we all go
forward together or we're not going forward at all.
And I know the economy's been booming and the
stock market, before today, and it's had a bad week
or so, but only the top 20 percent participate in that, yet a lot of people aren't.
Third, I just think that the Republican Party is no
longer a party of limited government, or of low taxes,
or decentralization, of giving power and responsibility
back to states and communities, and so I just
disagree with them. And I think those ideas are good,
not simply for college students, but for all Americans.
And I think this: I think it's time we stop subdividing
the American people into this group and that group and
end trying to buy them off with their own
tax dollars, and instead lay out a program which was best
for our country as a whole.
Yes, sir?
QUESTION: I'm from Indiana.
BUCHANAN: I'll be out there tomorrow in
Indianapolis.
QUESTION: Right. Right. I know. And you got
about as much chance...
BUCHANAN: We cut a deal with those guys, huh?
QUESTION: You got probably as much chance of
getting elected president of the United States as Billy
Graham has of being chosen pope. So why -- why is
it...
BUCHANAN: The way the church is going now,
Graham might make it.
QUESTION: Yes.
(LAUGHTER)
All right. If I would agree with you on everything you
say, which I don't, I disagree with you on most of
what you're saying...
BUCHANAN: Right.
QUESTION: ... but if I did, I guess I'm taken back
to, I got a letter to the editor from somebody who
support Perot a few years ago, headed the Perot,
and they said they wanted to apologize for electing
Bill Clinton.
Now people have different views on who's helping
Gore, who's helping Bush, but you, if you are running,
you are taking away from one side or the other.
Don't we have a choice this time between Bush and
Gore? And what other ball game is there?
BUCHANAN: Well, that's exactly the point: What
other ball game is there?
I -- you know, I ran against President Bush, and
after I was defeated I endorsed him and campaigned
all over the country. And he didn't run a good
campaign, to be very candid. And Ross Perot was
not the reason George Bush went from 54 percent to
37 percent in the polls, George Bush was responsible
for his own defeat.
In 1996, I ran against Mr. Dole and I was beating
him until they started calling me a lot of names and I
lost Arizona and lost the nomination. I came in
second out of 10. And I endorsed Bob Dole and
campaigned around the country for him. And the
Republicans ran a pathetic, "me too" campaign again.
Clinton got 49 percent of the vote. I don't think if
Ross Perot had been out of there Bob Dole would be
president.
And I think the Republicans are doing the same thing
again today. We see Mr. Bush down there, he's now
meeting with the gay rights movement and he's
moving in the same way that the moderate
Republicans and liberal Republicans always have,
and he's trying to accommodate the press. I've spent my whole life
supporting this party and I just said it's enough.
We are going to offer the American people
something different. We're going to restore their
sovereignty, we're going to keep them out of wars
that are none of their business, we're going to offer
them a trade policy that's best for this country, a new
Supreme Court. And we're going to offer the
American people something dramatically different: A
choice. And if they vote for me, even if I lose, I don't
believe they'll be throwing away their vote, and I
don't believe my votes automatically belong to Mr.
Bush or to Mr. Gore. I mean, what in heaven's name
has George Bush Jr. done to deserve to be president
of the United States, other than have a last name of
Bush?
Yes, sir?
QUESTION: I'm from Minnesota, so...
BUCHANAN: We were just up there too, right.
QUESTION: Yes. You can say anything about the
governor, we may agree on this. But...
(LAUGHTER)
BUCHANAN: Which paper are you with?
QUESTION: I'm from Monticello, I have a weekly
newspaper.
BUCHANAN: OK. When I was up there, when we
were on speaking terms, it was the St. Paul Pioneer
Press that was giving (inaudible).
QUESTION: Well, he's not on speaking terms with
the St. Paul Pioneer Press.
But one thing that you talk about, you just mentioned
that Bush could be viewed as, if you didn't say it, I'll
say it, lackluster.
I'm wondering, even though your differences with
Ventura, if you don't take heart to what happened in
Minnesota...
BUCHANAN: I do.
QUESTION: ... because what happened in
Minnesota is you had candidates, a Humphrey and
the mayor of St. Paul, Coleman, who didn't catch fire
with the electorate. And into that mix came Ventura,
who caught fire.
So I'm wondering, even though you have these
disagreements with him, as most of us in this room
would if you -- if they published newspapers, if you
don't see some model for your campaign out of what
happened in Minnesota.
BUCHANAN: You're exactly right. And you made
the point better than I made it to the gentleman who
just asked me the question.
In 1992, when I ran against President Bush, I went
into the New Hampshire primary, and Bush was at
85 percent, I was at 5 percent. And 10 weeks later, I almost beat the
president of the United States. Ross Perot, as you
know, that year got almost 20 percent of the vote.
In 1996, again, we almost beat Bob Dole.
This year, John McCain was in single digits, and
McCain, after New Hampshire, was beating
everyone in the United States.
But the best example is Governor Ventura, 1998.
Before he got into the October debates, he was at 10
percent and the Republican and Democrat were
basically splitting the rest of the 90 percent vote.
After several debates, Ventura won the governorship
of Minnesota. In a year, 1998, when the turnout was
at 36 percent across the country, it was at 60 percent
in Minnesota.
So this is our vision and our idea: to win that Reform
Party nomination; to be allowed in those debates,
three of them. That would be four and a half hours
of debating with Gore and Bush and lay out a
different agenda for America and try to strike that
spark again, because I think it's out there.
And if we're going to win, it's going to be not simply
with Republicans leaving the Republican Party and
Democrat working-class folks coming over and
independents, it's going to be people who have given
up on politics, people who've become cynical, and
people who are just coming into politics, young
people.
And we believe that the possibility is there, and if I
didn't think there was a chance, I wouldn't be doing
this.
But you're exactly right, the best example is
Governor Ventura.
Yes, ma'am?
QUESTION: I'm curious about your feeling of a
coalition kind of government. We look at the rest of
the world and in fact minority voices are well
represented, and maybe your voice needs to be
heard on a -- at a national level and recognized as a
representative.
BUCHANAN: Well, thank you. Frankly, if we won,
people said, "How would you work with the Congress
since you're not a Republican or a Democrat?" Well,
it's very simple. On national defense, I tend to agree
with the Republicans, and on Supreme Court I tend
to agree with conservative Republicans. But on a
trade policy, I tend to agree with these working-class
Democrats; we shouldn't be sending those jobs
abroad.
So I think on each of these you'd have a bipartisan
Cabinet of Americans who are interested -- who
accepted my agenda in their department, and you'd
work together. The real
problem I see with this country, you know, they say
I'm sort of living in the past. They're living in the
past. The Cold War is over. It's a brand new world
out there, and here we are behaving like the Cold
War is still on, looking for people to fight, looking to
places to confront. And I think that our country has
not moved out of that Cold War mindset, Republican
Party hasn't, the Democratic Party hasn't.
BUCHANAN: But I agree with you. I think they're
plenty of people in both parties and in the Reform
Party who would put together a great Cabinet. It
would be that they'd have some disparate views and
some great discussions, a lot better than the ones, I
guess, I used to listen to in my own White House
days.
Yes, sir?
QUESTION: Out in our part of the country our
biggest problem is we don't have enough people to do
the job. It's killing the economy from the standpoint
that I hire your person, you hire my person, we just
keep more wages back and forth for each other's
person. And it cuts back on productivity, so we're not
producing like we should.
There is a group of thought out in Iowa and some of
the Midwestern states that what we need to do is
open the flood gate and invite in 100,000 -- 200,000
people from Kosovo and some of those of places
where life is so bad and give them a chance to come
over as one great big unit of people to fill all this need
in employment. I'm just curious what you're thought
is about that?
BUCHANAN: I disagree with that. And I'll tell you
why, because I believe a country is more than
economy, an American is more than just an
American economy. And I do believe that the great
danger this country faces with what we see
happening in Great Britain -- or one of the dangers,
where you see Scotland peeling off, Wales peeling
off, Northern Ireland. We see the Basques breaking
away from Spain. We see the leg of (inaudible)
breaking away from Italy. We see Yugoslavia
busting apart. We see the Soviet Union come apart
into 15 nations.
The one great thing about the American melting pot,
we come from all over the world, is that it used to
sort of burnish us all, if you will, or burn us into
Americans so that even though my parents -- or
great grandparents came from Ireland and Scotland
and Germany, we all have one thing in common, I speak the
English language, I studied Shakespeare and English
poets in college. And we need to emphasize our
history, traditions and all the rest which keep us
together as one nation and one people.
Now you open up the flood gates now, when the
economy is good, probably everybody would have
jobs, bring 100 million people in. But when that
economy goes down, and folks don't know the
language, they don't know the history and they have
no allegiance or loyalty to the country, other than a
job, you're going to loose your country. And the
country to me is far more important than the
economy.
Thank you all very much for giving me the time. I
appreciate it.
(APPLAUSE)
