Bush Stresses Fair Trade, Fair Currency Exchange Rates
Roundtable interview with Asian journalists
Tuesday, 14 October 2003

In an interview with Asian journalists October 14, President Bush stressed the importance of fair trade and fair currency exchange rates and said he would bring up the issues during his upcoming trip to the Asia-Pacific region and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Meeting in Bangkok.

"A competitive world is one that I think is positive, so long as the competition is fair," he said.

"We expect the markets to reflect the true value of currency," Bush added, and "the way that currencies ought to be valued is based upon economic activity, fiscal policy, monetary policy of the respective governments, the potential for growth, the potential for long-term viability of the economies."

Following are White House excerpts of the interview:

QUESTION: Mr. President, are you concerned at the way American jobs are being sucked away to Asia, particularly China, but also Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand? Are you going to be speaking to your APEC colleagues to try to help you do something about this?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I'm going to say that where there is trade imbalances, countries need to be mindful that we expect there to be fair trade. And I fully understand a competitive world is one that I think is positive, so long as the competition is fair.

And we'll talk about currency with the Chinese and with my friend, Prime Minister Koizumi. I will remind them that this nation has a strong dollar policy, and we expect the markets to reflect the true value of currency. That the way that currencies ought to be valued is based upon economic activity, fiscal policy, monetary policy of the respective governments, the potential for growth, the potential for long-term viability of the economies. That's how our respective currencies ought to be valued.

Yes, we'll bring that up. And I am -- my main focus here in America is there to be significant job creation. It looks like we're getting some positive results. Part of making sure that the job creation -- momentum of the job creation is viable is to make sure -- is to talk to our trading partners about fair trade. And there are some trade imbalances that I will be discussing.

EXCERPT ON DOLLAR POLICY

QUESTION: Given the recent depreciation of the dollar vis-a-vis the yen, what do you think of the dollar's devaluation?

THE PRESIDENT: I think I'm for a strong policy. We have a strong dollar policy in this administration. Currencies ought to be valued based upon the respective strengths of the economies, based upon the policies of the governments. We have had a very pro-growth policy in this administration. I've worked with Congress to enact historic tax relief in order to give our people more of their own money back and let them spend it and drive demand for goods and service. And it's beginning to pay off. The economy is improving. And markets ought to be evaluating our respective currencies.

QUESTION: So what is your view on Japan's --

THE PRESIDENT: Well, that's my view, that markets ought to be determining respective to currencies.