Interview With the President Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Members of the United Press International Newspaper Advisory Board.

THE PRESIDENT. I would like to say, first of all, that I'm grateful that you would come here. You represent an organization that's extremely important to our country.

Many of you—I think some of you, at least—were in New York when I made an address earlier this week on SALT. It was a very fine occasion for me to relate to the American people just one of the many issues that I, as President, have to face almost on a daily basis. This is one of the most important, but a typical foreign affairs issue. We've got others of a domestic nature, which take up by far most of my time.

ADMINISTRATION POLICIES

Right now we're dealing with the energy question, trying to evolve, hammer out over a long period of time a comprehensive energy policy for our country, which has been hotly debated, perhaps one of the most controversial issues that Congress has ever faced, and one of extreme complexity.

I think with the decontrol mechanism, which will be implemented beginning the 1st of June, and with the passage of the windfall profits tax, with the creation of an energy security trust fund, we will make another major stride forward in having a policy that will restrain waste of energy, shift away from heavy dependence—even growing dependence on foreign oil—escalate the production of oil and gas in our own country, shift to more common supplies of energy already known about, existing in our country, and also let us open up an avenue of increased use of energy sources with which we're not presently fully acquainted or which are economically not feasible.

In the process, we can provide aid for the poor people who will be particularly hurt in the next number of months by the decontrol of oil itself. The estimate that I made in April of the revenues for the Federal Government from the windfall profits tax was slightly below what we will realize from the message that I sent to Congress yesterday. We'll get about a hundred million dollars per year more than we had anticipated with the fact sheets that we used to brief the press back in April.

In general, for the oil that is decontrolled, the increase in price—for each dollar, the Federal Government will get about 55 cents. The industry will realize about 25 cents, roughly. We can't tell exactly, because part of the tax, as you know, is predicated. on how much OPEC prices go up above and beyond the inflation rate. If they continue to rise relative to the inflation rate, the tax levies would be proportionately higher.

This leaves the oil industry, as a result of decontrol, after they pay Federal and State taxes, about $6 billion, which should and I hope will be used to invest in increased production of oil and gas in our country.

Another major problem that I face at this point is the economy. We had very good news today on our balance of trade position. We've been heavily emphasizing increased exports, and we've been encouraged by the trends. We've also been very encouraged by the stabilization of the value of the dollar since we took strong action last November. And as you know, the gross national product of our country is sound and, we think, is increasing at approximately the proper rate, one that we would choose if we could arbitrarily select one.

The inflation rate is very high. Most of the inflation does come from the items over which we have and can have no control—commodity prices traded on the international markets, oil prices, the price of food products that are heavily affected by adverse weather conditions, like the extremely severe winter weather, and low beef herds that are a result of the price controls that were imposed 5 or 6 years ago.

But we have been very encouraged with the response, both of the working people of our country and also of management, in trying to hold down wages and prices under the voluntary system. It does have teeth. It is effective. And I think we have been blessed by having it. It's not always perfect; we've had to evolve it in a hurry. But the response from the business community and the labor community has been encouraging to us.

I think the best thing for me to do now is to respond to any questions that you might have. I'll try to be brief and to the point, and I'll recognize you arbitrarily.

QUESTIONS

U.S.-MEXICAN RELATIONS

Q. Mr. President, the relations with Mexico are very important in our energy program. We heard there for quite a while that Portillo was making statements, and we were countering. I haven't heard, really, lately, where that situation stands. Have we improved our relations? Have there been any new negotiations with Mexico on their oil exports?

THE PRESIDENT. Compared to the reports in the press, the situation was already improved. [Laughter] It never has been nearly so bad as it was projected immediately prior to my visit there. But there seemed to be a wave of reporting that swept the country, almost in an uncontrollable fashion. And when I was there, meeting for literally hours in a harmonious relationship with Lopez Portillo, he and I were both deeply concerned about the exaggeration of differences between us.

Obviously, Mexico has a rapidly increasing prospect for development—domestic consumption and also the exporting of oil and gas. What they do about these factors—exploration, production, and distribution—is entirely and completely a decision for them to make. They guard this prerogative very jealously. And I agree completely. We do not want to get involved in that.

Whatever gas and oil they desire to sell, we are ready to be good customers. We already buy about 85 percent of all the oil that Mexico exports. And we have an advantage as a customer because of the proximity of our country to Mexico.

As they produce oil, because of the configuration of their oil and gas deposits, they inevitably produce more gas. They need a market for this gas. And we want to treat Mexico fairly in the price. The original proposal by Mexico on how to price gas, I did not think was the best for American consumers. As a result of deregulation of natural gas, brought about by the energy legislation last year, we now have a very good supply of natural gas in our own country. We did not need to buy Mexican gas on a crash basis at a price that would have greatly escalated not only [the price of] ¹ the gas from Mexico but all the gas produced in our country.

¹ Printed in the transcript.

So, we are now negotiating on a daily basis in a spirit of harmony and cooperation with Mexico for contracts to buy increasing supplies of Mexican gas in the future. So far as I know, and I've had reports almost every day, these negotiations are on track. We want to buy their gas in a way that protects the interests of American consumers; Mexico certainly wants to get as high a price as they can for it.

But I've got a problem in that the price we pay for Mexican gas will heavily influence the price demanded for domestically produced gas and, also, the price for natural gas that we buy from Canada, and the price for gas that we will ultimately bring down through Canada into our country from Alaska.

So, it's a complicated problem, and the fact that we didn't yield and immediately accept the highly favorable price of natural gas, looking at it from a Mexican perspective, was strongly condemned in our own country. I was protecting the American consumers, and I think our judgment was right. And now we have a very good, continuing relationship with Mexico on this and many other issues.

RHODESIAN ELECTIONS

Q. Mr. President, on the recent Rhodesian elections, do you consider that they were a step in the right direction? And do you see any possible recommendation on your part if there's a change in what you have not recommended?

THE PRESIDENT. Let me say that I think it was a step in the right direction, yes. I would rather not comment on the elections yet, because we are still assessing how they were conducted and whether or not the extant legislation, primarily the Case-Javits amendment, has been honored or not.

The law requires me to wait until the new government is installed before I make a judgment to the Congress and to the American people on whether the new election results were adequate. So, let me defer that question, because the law requires me to do so. But it was certainly a step in the right direction.

PRESIDENT'S HEALTH AND EXERCISE

Q. Sir, with all these problems, I am curious to know how you find time to go jogging— [laughter] —what time of day you do it, and how often, and how far have you gotten up to now?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, I'll be brief. The most I jog in one day is 10 miles. Ordinarily, I jog 4 miles. When I'm on vacation—down in Georgia, I averaged about 6 miles.

When I'm in Jerusalem, or Cairo, or Mexico City, or Alexandria, or Guadeloupe, or wherever, we generally jog about 35 or 40 minutes, early in the mornings. When I'm around the White House here, it's more convenient for me to jog later on in the afternoon, 4: 30, 5 o'clock. I enjoy it. And I don't have any present intention of going above 10 miles, because of the time constraints; that takes me about an hour and a half.

I might say that I called Bill Rogers the other day after he won his magnificent, third Boston Marathon, and congratulated him. And he said he was still sore.

Sometimes I get sore as well. But I'm in good shape. I've deliberately dropped my weight down to about 148, which is what the doctors say I ought to do, and my pulse rate has dropped about half—well, from 60 down to 40. So, I feel better; enjoy it.

My wife jogs an average of about 2 miles a day. Her longest distance is 4 miles, but that was in the mountains, and it's pretty hard to jog in the mountains.

It's been a good sport for me. It has a minimum requirement for time, compared to almost any other sport of that much exercise.

PRESIDENT'S CAMPAIGN ACTIVITIES

Q. Mr. President, this week you had one or two political appearances in the Northeast. I come from California, where we have an evolving foreign policy on Africa. [Laughter] I'm wondering if you intend to step up your campaign activities and appearances in California in the months ahead?

THE PRESIDENT. No. I don't intend to make any campaign appearances in the foreseeable future. But I am going to be out in Los Angeles before too long, as President. We've had this trip planned for a good while. I'll be stopping in Iowa on the way for some events there.

I have habitually taken advantage of an opportunity as President to have things like townhall meetings not only in our own country—in Mississippi, in Massachusetts, in New Hampshire, in Oregon, and so forth—but also in other countries, places like West Berlin, where I had just an open, free-style townhall meeting. And I might possibly have one in Japan when I go over there later on in June. But I'm going to stay out of the campaigning business for a while.

PRESIDENTIAL TERM OF OFFICE

Q. Mr. President, in light of an upcoming campaign, do you feel that Presidents of the future should have their terms limited to one, maybe 6-year term, so that you wouldn't have the possibility of—-

THE PRESIDENT. I didn't use to think so, even after I became President. But I've begun to realize lately that if I could just, by the stroke of a pen, change the Constitution, I think one 6-year term would be preferable. The reason is that no matter what I do as President now, where I am really trying to ignore politics and stay away from any sort of campaign plans and so forth, a lot of the things I do are colored through the news media and in the minds of the American people by, "Is this a campaign ploy or is it genuinely done by an incumbent President in the best interests of our country without any sort of personal advantage involved?"

I think that if I had a 6-year term, without any prospect of reelection, it would be an improvement. This is the case in some countries, as you know. And I've come to that conclusion reluctantly, not that I have any inclination to avoid , a campaign if I decide to run in the future, but because of that reason that I've described to you.

And there are some others as well. I think it would strengthen my hand with the Congress. The lameduck aspect doesn't concern me at all. And I think there could be some appropriate constitutional prohibitions against trying to be a kingmaker and being involved in choosing one's own successor.

This, for instance, applies in Venezuela, where there is a prohibition against involvement in a succeeding campaign. So, 6 years would be better, I think.

CONGRESSIONAL TERMS OF OFFICE

Q. Do you feel that should go for the Hill, too?

THE PRESIDENT. I'm sorry?

Q. For Congress?

THE PRESIDENT. No, I think not. I would personally not want to. The Senate, obviously, has 6 years. I think it's good for the House to be constantly campaigning. I think one branch of the Congress ought to be constantly under the political pressure of maintaining contact with the people back home. It's onerous for incumbents, but I think it's good.

NEW ENGLAND ENERGY PRICES

Q. Mr. President, in New Hampshire the other day, you said that the disparity of energy prices in New England and the rest of the country would decrease in the future. That led to some speculation that the prices themselves would be less in New England than they are now. Is that the impression you intended to leave?

THE PRESIDENT. No, I didn't. I think if you read what I said, I was very careful to say that prices would increase in the future and we had to use less oil. I eliminated all special taxes on imported oil. We had already eliminated part of it; fees, they're called. And I think with a more ready distribution of oil throughout our country, that the difference in prices will be lessened.

We have now a situation where New England imports about, I think, 80 percent of all the oil they use. And they are heavily dependent on oil for major power production, as contrasted with other parts of the country where they use more coal and natural gas. I think New England now uses about 2 percent natural gas. Georgia, just as a contrasting interest, gets 85 percent of its electricity from coal. Not only does New England use 80 percent oil, but they also import 80 percent of all the oil they use.

So, I think the new energy program, with increasing supplies coming in from Canada, with the pipelines that we can evolve, with increased uses of alternate energy sources, improved quantities of domestic oil and natural gas, decreased dependence upon imported oil, the use of forest wood, low-height dams—all this will help to reduce the wide disparity in prices of energy paid by New England. But in general, all of the prices for energy in our country have gone up and will go up.

I might point out that all increases that have taken place now that cause consternation among our people have taken place under control legislation. And I think that our new opportunity to create the energy security fund will let us help to alleviate these disparities.

WAGE AND PRICE GUIDELINES

Q. Mr. President, the economy, as you have mentioned, is a serious problem. And by some, the voluntary wage and price mechanism is seen as less than a complete success, with the Teamsters contract and with others pending. Is there a next step in this battle, or what is your plan to attempt to combat rising inflation?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, we've only had 6 months, I think roughly 6 months, since the day I announced the voluntary price and wage standards. I have been very pleased at the results. We called originally for the corporations to have a deceleration program, to cut hack on the increase in prices a half a percentage point below what they did the previous 2 years. The present standards are more stringent than that. We have monitored all of the Fortune 500 corporations, and now, an increasing number of the medium-sized and smaller corporations in our country.

We have found remarkable compliance. I think we are now looking at about 13 of those corporations about which there is some doubt. Three or four, we believe, have been out of compliance. One or two of those three or four have, in the last 2 days, agreed to modify their price structure and to comply. In a few instances, they have made rebates to their customers when they overcharged.

I called a major company in the United States yesterday to tell them that we thought they were out of compliance and that we were going to announce this fact in the near future. The executives of that company asked me for one more chance to come and meet with our wage and price people to see if they couldn't work out a way to get in compliance.

The Teamsters settlement is one that also caused us a great deal of concern. I don't want to get involved in exactly whether they did or did not specifically comply with the guidelines. The guidelines, in my opinion, without a doubt at all, have drastically reduced, substantially reduced the settlements, compared to what they would have been without the guidelines.

We are going to fight in every instance, to the limit of my ability, to keep prices and wages within the guidelines. And I think there's been a general tone of support. General Motors, for instance, sent out, early this month, letters to 22,000 of their suppliers, stating that they themselves, General Motors, were going to comply completely with the guidelines, and they encouraged all their suppliers to do so. And in the process of that, I think their attitude will have a beneficial effect on the United Automobile Workers union, later, when the negotiations take place.

I'm not trying to predict what's going to happen. But a common commitment to holding down inflation, I think, is a patriotic gesture, and I've been pleased so far.

Let me say that there's no way that I can control or would want to control prices that are traded internationally, like lead, zinc, molybdenum, silver, gold. I can't control oil prices. Most of our products that are produced in our country of a same nature, like beef, where there's a worldwide shortage of beef herds, or soybeans, corn, wheat, or timber products-these are the kind of things that you cannot control, no matter how much you try, even if you had legislation.

So, I think among those items that we have an ability to control, through voluntary standards, we have been remarkably successful. And I'm very proud of that program. I think we'll begin to see results. But it's going to be a few more months before tangible results can be ascertained.

One other point I'd like to make is that we gave the companies some flexibility. For instance, in mail-order catalog companies-and there are literally hundreds or maybe thousands of those around the country—as you know, they print up the catalogs 6 months ahead of time. You can't expect them to abolish all of those price systems. And also, we let the companies, in order to get compliance agreements from them, have the option, over a period of time, to initiate the price increases at the beginning, first of all, of a year; then we cut it down to the beginning of a 6-month period; and lately, we've modified that, that they agreed to have the price increases only in 3-month increments, which holds down the impact.

So, I've been pleased so far. Inflation is my biggest domestic problem. I don't know an answer to it that's easy. And I think that we will have a growing realization that our wage and price standards are working. I think they're working.

NUCLEAR ENERGY

Q. Mr. President, 15 or 90 years from now, when we're looking back on the Three Mile Island accident, what do you think the significance of that episode will have proved to have been in terms of the role of nuclear power in this country?

THE PRESIDENT. I think you realize that the number of new nuclear plants purchased in our country in the last few years has been almost nonexistent. I think in 1 year, the year I became President, there were no orders placed domestically for new powerplants. We now have, I think, 70, 72, that are operable, and others being constructed.

When I ran for President in '76, on the same ballot with me there were 22 States that had referenda where the people themselves were trying to consider, "Should we authorize any nuclear plants in our State, or should we prohibit them, or under what circumstances should they be authorized?" I think the Three Mile Island accident will help to clear the air.

I think this report—which will not have to wait 20 years, but will be coming to me within 6 months—will accurately determine the cause of the accident; the defects in administration immediately following the accident by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Federal, State and local government agencies, the power company; the way that facts were revealed by those officials to the press, and the way the press related them to the public; whether there was an excessive amount of concealment of the facts, whether that concealment was deliberate or not; I think, the design criteria, the operation criteria; whether or not the NRC has adequate authority, whether they exercised that authority properly. I think all these questions that had been festering for literally years, maybe even more than a decade, will now be resolved to a substantial degree.

The American people still believe, by a substantial majority, even immediately following the Three Mile Island incident, that there is a place for nuclear power in the production of energy in our country. And I think that following this incident, many of those questions—I'll use the word "festering" again—will be answered.

The Congress is about to make a serious mistake, in my opinion, in launching us into a plutonium society. The Clinch River breeder reactor is a proposal which was well under way before I became President. I have tried to stop it because of the reason I've just described to you. It's a brand new technology that advances far beyond the light water uranium reactor into a very complicated new technology-liquid metal, a coolant with plutonium, which in my opinion wastes over $1 1/2 billion of American taxpayers' money. And I hope that the new sense of concern will help to stop that wasteful project. In the meantime, we will continue to promote safety of the light water plants, and we'll continue our research and development program for the breeder reactor, which is a plutonium reactor, so that it can be built in our Nation if and when in the future we need it. We do not need it now.

So, I think the answers will come quickly, they're long overdue.

MS. PEEK. Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT. Thank you.