Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
One of out of every five jobs in our country depends on trade. So, I will
propose a broader strategy in the field of international trade--one that
increases the openness of our trading system and is fairer to America's
farmers and workers in the world marketplace. We must have adequate export
financing to sell American products overseas. I will ask for new
negotiating authority to remove barriers and to get more of our products
into foreign markets. We must strengthen the organization of our trade
agencies and make changes in our domestic laws and international trade
policy to promote free trade and the increased flow of American goods,
services, and investments.
Our trade position can also be improved by making our port system more
efficient. Better, more active harbors translate into stable jobs in our
coalfields, railroads, trucking industry, and ports. After 2 years of
debate, it's time for us to get together and enact a port modernization
bill.
Education, training, and retraining are fundamental to our success as are
research and development and productivity. Labor, management, and
government at all levels can and must participate in improving these tools
of growth. Tax policy, regulatory practices, and government programs all
need constant reevaluation in terms of our competitiveness. Every American
has a role and a stake in international trade.
We Americans are still the technological leaders in most fields. We must
keep that edge, and to do so we need to begin renewing the basics--starting
with our educational system. While we grew complacent, others have acted.
Japan, with a population only about half the size of ours, graduates from
its universities more engineers than we do. If a child doesn't receive
adequate math and science teaching by the age of 16, he or she has lost the
chance to be a scientist or an engineer. We must join together--parents,
teachers, grass roots groups, organized labor, and the business
community--to revitalize American education by setting a standard of
excellence.
In 1983 we seek four major education goals: a quality education initiative
to encourage a substantial upgrading of math and science instruction
through block grants to the States; establishment of education savings
accounts that will give middle and lower-income families an incentive to
save for their children's college education and, at the same time,
encourage a real increase in savings for economic growth; passage of
tuition tax credits for parents who want to send their children to private
or religiously affiliated schools; a constitutional amendment to permit
voluntary school prayer. God should never have been expelled from America's
classrooms in the first place.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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