Remarks Upon Signing the Kennedy Round Trade Negotiations Proclamation.

Secretary Rusk, Ambassador Roth, Members of Congress, ladies and gentlemen:

The large enterprises that really shape history take a great deal of time and much hard work.

As our team of negotiators know so well, the Kennedy Round has been just such an enterprise.

It was 5 years ago that the Congress passed the Trade Expansion Act but that act only provided us with some authority. It did not provide us with any guarantee of results.

It took 5 years of very careful and very difficult negotiations to reach the agreements that were signed in Geneva on June 30 of this year.

We are indebted to many people for the conduct of those negotiations.

This morning we come here to the Cabinet Room to celebrate the first concrete results of this long effort.

Beginning January 1 our tariffs on many of the products that we import will drop in the first of what will be five annual reductions.

This will mean lowering the prices to our consumers and lowering the costs to our manufacturers.

Our trading partners will take equivalent action on their tariffs, too.

This will mean bigger export sales, we hope, for American businessmen and American farmers.

Those who negotiated at Geneva drove a hard bargain, but we believe it was a fair bargain.

We gave, we think, as much as we received.

It was the kind of bargain from which all will gain.

They will gain in higher wages for the workers, in more efficient factories, in rising incomes for us all, and for our trading partners throughout the world.

Now, these negotiations were on a world scale but they had a very special significance for our relations with Western Europe because for the first time we negotiated directly with the European Common Market as an institution.

We were dealing with the power of the world's largest trading bloc.

The negotiations demonstrated what we have very long believed: The more that Western Europe acts together the more effectively we and other countries can work together.

This was a subject I explored with a great deal of interest this last week with Mr. Monnet, who was here from Europe, and who insisted on talking about it at great length.

This was evident, we think, in a number of very constructive steps that were taken during this year, in a very wide variety of activities with our European neighbors.

Contrary to what a good many have thought, or said, or, if you please, written, our thoughts were not constantly and exclusively on Vietnam. There were other parts of the world that did receive consideration and attention as must be obvious.

NATO, from which Secretary Rusk has just returned this morning, continues to be the strongest integrated alliance in history-it is not just a mere collection of allies--even while we had to move its nerve center from France to Belgium.

There was a question of what would happen to the 15 nations in connection with some of the decisions made concerning our move and the continuance of the alliance.

During this year we had some very important activities in connection with our German and our British allies, when we reached a trilateral agreement, under Secretary Rusk's and Mr. McCloy's leadership, that enabled us to maintain our commitments, our troop commitments, to NATO's central fund, and which helped us also to materially ease our balance of payments.

There was a time with many resolutions in our own Congress to bring our men home, and when it was being reported that the Germans themselves would take substantial reductions in troops--I think 60,000--that there was alarm in the world.

But the fait accompli did not come out that way.

Also, together with the other members of the International Monetary Fund, we achieved an agreement which lays the foundation for the supplementary international reserves needed by the world economy, which resulted in many discussions in London and subsequently confirmed at Rio.

We are making progress, we believe, toward an accord to halt the spread of nuclear weapons--while at the same time ensuring that all nations will be able to benefit from the peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

We have worked with our NATO allies and with the U.N. to forestall a tragic war between Greece and Turkey, and to open the way to a peaceful settlement of the Cyprus problem.

We are working with other industrial countries to provide very special trade advantages to the developing countries which could help to speed up the growth of their exports and to accelerate their economic progress.

These achievements, I think, demonstrate the basic principle of interdependence in international policy.

By moving together we all move forward. By moving separately we may end up by just not moving at all, if we try to go alone.

Trade will be a critical test of our cooperation. The reduced tariffs of the Kennedy Round will give rise to many demands for protection here and abroad.

We must all stand firm against shortsighted protectionism.

Now, we have shown that we can work together with united allies in many fields. I have listed four or five of them.

If we can do it in these four or five, we have a land of opportunity out there where we can do it in others.

We all have problems of the cities, urban problems, and many of theirs are as serious if not more so than ours--older cities. But if we can do it on trade, if we can do it on troops, if we can do it on the NATO alliance, if we can do it on money, why can't we do it on cities?

The problem of all the world is a problem of what are we going to do about the developing nations.

Four out of every ten people can't read "dog," and can't write "mama," and can't spell "cat."

There are the education problems, the health problems, the developing nations problems, per se.

If we can work out these things together, why can't we work together on aid for developing nations?

Why can't we work together on aid for rebuilding the cities of the world?

So, I take great pride, not only in what the Kennedy Round does just within itself, but what it portends, and what may flow from the knowledge that if we can do it in connection with all these things that we buy and sell, which reach pretty close to home in some of these places, we can do it on others.

We know that to sell abroad we must be willing to buy abroad. If we cannot buy, then we cannot sell.

Above all, we in the United States should have the confidence in our own ability to compete in the world--although as the protectionists talk to me day after day I think sometimes we are losing confidence in our own ability.

We started on the road to expanding trade about 30 years ago, under the policies of a great Secretary of State and President.

Its advances, I think, are pretty evident to us all. Now, to retreat from it would, I think, set a chain reaction of counter-protection and retaliation that would put in jeopardy our ability to work together and to prosper together.

What captain of industry or what union leader in this country really yearns and is eager to return to the days of Smoot-Hawley? For the world of higher tariffs, and quotas, and competitive currency depreciation was also the world of you-know-what--deep depressions, rampant unemployment, low profits, if any, and, generally, losses; corporation losses instead of corporation profits.

So, this day of declining trade barriers in a world of unprecedented prosperity and growth is something we want to continue.

We must and we will, I hope, keep it that way.

Almost every person in this room this morning had a share in this legislation and made a contribution to the soul-searching decisions and the difficult negotiations that lay behind the great accomplishments that we know as the Kennedy Round.

I want to thank each of you present for the help you gave and the role you played.

I know that we share the faith and the confidence to continue on that long road.

I want to say a special thanks to Mrs. Herter and her family for the great contribution that that noble, enlightened statesman made to this endeavor--Christian Herter.

I want to expressly give my personal thanks on behalf of the people I can speak for--that is this Nation.

I believe the whole world feels it.

To Ambassador Roth, Ambassador Blumenthal, and to Secretary Rusk and the Members of Congress who contributed so much, so long, under such adverse conditions I want to say thank you and hope that it will, in some degree, compensate you for the criticisms that you have endured throughout this journey.