And these success stories happenin partnership with countries all over the world because ofthe resources thatwe’ve deployed to bring business and jobs back to America. Theseinvestments,my friends, are paying for themselves. We create more than 5,000 jobs foreverybillion dollars of goods and services that we export. So the last thing that weshould do issurrender this kind of leverage.
These successes are happening inCanada, where State Department officers there got a localautomotive firm toinvest tens of millions of dollars in Michigan, where the Americanautoindustry is now making a remarkable comeback.
In Indonesia where, thanks toEmbassy Jakarta, that nation’s largest privately run airlinejust placed anorder for commercial aircraft, the largest order Boeing has ever been askedtofill. Meanwhile, the Indonesian state railroad is buying its locomotives fromGeneral Electric.
In South Africa, where more than600 U.S. companies are doing business, and where OPIC,the Overseas PrivateInvestment Corporation, and the Export-Import Bank, and the TradeandDevelopment Agency just opened an office to help close more investment dealsbetweenAmerican companies and Africa’s booming energy and transportationsectors, it’s also a two-waystreet. A major South African energy company isplanning to build a multibillion-dollar plant inLouisiana that will put moreAmericans to work.
Let me tell you, this ishappening, in Cameroon and Bosnia and other surprising places. Inthe shadowsof World War II, if you told someone that Japan and Germany would today beourfourth- and fifth-largest trading partners, someone would have thought you werecrazy.Before Nixon’s bold opening with China, no one could have imagined thattoday it would be oursecond-largest trading partner, but that’s exactly what’shappened.
Eleven of our top 15 tradingpartners used to be the beneficiaries of U.S. foreignassistance. That’sbecause our goal isn’t to keep a nation dependent on us forever. It’spreciselyto create these markets, to open these opportunities, to establish rule of law.Our goalis to use assistance and development to help nations realize their ownpotential, develop theirown ability to govern and become our economic partners.
One of America’s most incrediblerealities continues to be that we are a country without anypermanent enemies.Now, take Vietnam. I will never forget standing next to John McCain in theEastRoom of the White House, each of us on either side of President Clinton as heannounced theonce unthinkable normalization of our relations with Vietnam, aneffort that John McCain andI worked on for about ten years, try to bringabout.
In the last decade, thanks inlarge part to the work of USAID, our exports to Vietnamincreased by more than700 percent. Every one of those percentage points are jobs here inAmerica. Andin the last two decades, a thousand Vietnamese students and scholars havestudiedand taught in America through the Fulbright program, including theForeign Minister ofVietnam, who I just talked to the other day and who,believe me, has feelings about Americabecause of that engagement.
The list goes on. As the emergingmiddle class in India, the world’s largest democracy,buys our products, thatmeans jobs and income for our own middle class. As our traditionalassistanceto Brazil decreases, trade there is increasing. Brazil is one of the new tigersgrowing ata double-digit pace, and it supports additional jobs here at home,many in the U.S. travel andtourism industry.
When Jefferson expanded ourconsular posts precisely to promote trade, he never couldhave imagined theimportance today. Nor could he have predicted the number of Americansabroadthat we help with their passports, with visas, with other problems that arise.Or that wehelp offer, to those who want to grow their families throughadoption, or who find themselves inlegal trouble or distress far from home. Orthe role our diplomats play, screening potentialsecurity threats and takingthem off the radar screen before they ever reach yourconsciousness,potentially in the worst ways. Or that we create a new American job forevery65 visitors that we help to bring to our shores.
So, my friends, we have to keepgoing. We can’t afford the kind of delay and disruption thatstands on thehorizon in Washington. The exciting new trade negotiation that PresidentObamaannounced last week between the United States and the European Union willcreate theworld’s biggest bilateral deal when it comes to fruition, atransatlantic partnership that willmatch the scope and ambition of ourTrans-Pacific Partnership talks.
But our work is far from over.Seven of the ten fastest growing countries are on the Africancontinent. AndChina, understanding that, is already investing more than we do there. Fourofthe five biggest oil and natural gas discoveries happened off the coast ofMozambique last yearalone. Developing economies are the epicenters of growth,and they are open for business, andthe United States needs to be at thattable.
If we want a new list ofassistance graduates, countries that used to take our aid but nowbuy ourexports, we can’t afford to pull back. And if we’re going to seize this budgetcrisis as thegreat opportunity that it can be, we can’t shy away from tellingthis story to the Americanpeople, to your members of Congress, and to theworld.
But let me emphasize: Jobs andtrade are not the whole story, and nor should they be. Thegood work of theState Department, of USAID, is measured not only in the value of thedollar,but it’s also measured in our deepest values. We value security and stabilityin otherparts of the world, knowing that failed states are among our greatestsecurity threats, and newpartners are our greatest assets.
The investments that we makesupport our efforts to counter terrorism and violentextremism wherever itflourishes. And we will continue to help countries provide their ownsecurity,use diplomacy where possible, and support those allies who take the fighttoterrorists.
And remember – boy, I can’temphasize this enough; I’m looking at a soldier here in front ofme with aribbon on his chest – deploying diplomats today is much cheaper thandeployingtroops tomorrow. We need to remember that. (Applause.) As Senator LindseyGrahamsaid, “It’s national security insurance that we’re buying.”
Now,it sounds expensive, myfriends, but simple bottom line, it’s not. The StateDepartment’s conflictstabilization budget is about $60 million a year now. That’s how much themovie“The Avengers” took in on a single Sunday last May. (Laughter.) The differenceis the folksthat we have on the ground doing this job are actually realsuperheroes.