of-around the world, the pope francis provides the leadership that is so necessary to this when we see all the atrocities around the world and inhumanity of man to man, the spiritual contribution of latin america, which is very, very extraordinary, should be appreciated and recognized. now, we'll take some more questions. you, next, and then concluding remarks. >> hi. i want -- a lot of us are -- happening in latin america, and part of the reason is that the media doesn't cover it as much as they cover other regions over the world. conflict or no conflict elm just dent -- it's not always in the headline news.

do you believe that -- what's your opinion that at this point with the advances in technology, particularly internet, facebook, whatever you want to call it, that much of what you are saying is going to be more exposed and do you see any influence on it going in any particular direction? >> well, because some of our other obligations, we're very grateful to you for coming. thank you. happy holidays. i'm sorry about this. you want to restate your question one more time? >> just wanted to know whether the advanced technological advance, internet and so on, opens up the world more, would

it affect any of the situation in latin america? positive or negative? >> i think latin america is very much part of the internet revolution, for good and for bad. but it does have access to media here. they know what is going on in the united states, unlike the coverage in our country that don't cover -- i said i have to subscribe to four newspapers to get some information and the best one on litin america is the financial times, which is in a north american newspaper. u.s.-based newspaper. but i think the well-educated

class is very much aware of what is going on, and it -- i would say the one thing that is not addressed in the degree that i believe it ought to be -- there are studies about united states studies as we do latin american studies in our university. s. it's hard to -- universities. it's hard to find a program in latin american universities that really focuses on the history, the politics, the function offering institutions in the united states, and this is something that is sorely lacking. but headlines. they know and i think they're very, very slowly programs and classes that are working on

addressing this lack of understanding and following of u.s. history and functioning. >> okay, thank you very much. we have time for one more question. this younge lady here. >> hi, thank you. i'm from the brookings indisposition was curious -- sort of a leaded question. want to hear your thoughts whether or not president-elect trump will roll back the warming towards cuba and if he does what you think he would do and what the results of those policies would be. >> we don't know. >> i'm not sure that he knows yet. we don't know. >> he has made a couple of comments that have said that,

unless cuba gives a better deal, then he's going to change things. but other than that, nothing has been said. so, we don't even have yet secretary of state or assistant secretary of state for interamerican affairs and don't know. >> [inaudible] >> i would say that the u.s., just as i mentioned in terms of latin american policy, has had a much better reception from a number of governments because no longer does the u.s. have to confront the fact that it's isolating cuba. in addition, a lot of the organizations that have grown up to -- as an alternative to the

oas, like alba, have been as a result of the policy of cuba, and the relationship between cuba, nicaragua, venezuela, bolivia, and with normalization, that will no longer be as much of a threat. in addition, i think probably the biggest thing is mr. trump is a businessman. increasingly in this country, whether it's the agriculture group in the midwest or the tourists industry, americans want to do business with cuba. and so -- and also there's no longer the big political majority? florida that is anti-cuba. it's pretty much split, and as the younger people -- so there's no longer a political advantage,

which used to also drive a lot of u.s. policy towards cuba. so i would say that normalization has a lot of advantages, and even though mr. trump doesn't like a lot of the political, economic human rights policies in cuba, they will probably improve with normalization because that will take the pressure off of either the current or -- there will be a new regime in 2018. >> time to wrap it up. i want to on behalf of the potomac institute think this panel. you have -- thank this panel. you have been great and we hope to get you back soon.

we ought to talk about latin america some more. i'm the eternal optimist and i want to say i've been in all the latin american countries, and spent considerable time in a number of them, in a number of different capacities. the latin american people are good people. some aren't, just like in this country, and we need to remember that. and i -- as a number of the latin american countries stuck with us in world war ii, like brazil and the like. i had the dubious distinction some years ago, just before the falklandss war, down in camp lejeune, my division trained both the argentinian marines and the royal marines for england. so we had a big bet going on who was going to win. there was reference to the military side. don't underestimate the military

side and the military relationships. these relationships are long-standing. there are many, many, many younge officers from latin america who have trained in army schools and navy schools and the like and the relationships are what you would expect. it's not just all military. it's a personal, personal people to people kind of thing, and even in the case of the marine corps, all latin american countries have marine corps, and the like, and with the exception of cuba, and the relationships there, you just can't explain it. they're just there forever, and so these -- and these kind of -- the thinking that goes into this is much more than just military and he like, and sew have a great opportunity to make things better.

i think in terms of policy and the like, and with the new administration, he is picking people who understand what is going on. he's picking people who are very, very knowledgeable about latin america, for example, and the kind of challenges they face and so on. so, we need to be optimistic here. we need to go forward, and we need to understand it's a little bit of a different culture, and maybe the american people would be wise in learning about other cultures in other regions and other thought processes and the like, and the treatment of women is a good example. that's gotten much, much, much better. 20 years ago, when i was still on active duty, never sent wilma recents on security duty in

latin america or in the middle east, simply because the anymore didn't treat our women the way they should be. and if you want to get in trouble with me, just treat our girls with other than dignity. so that's changing overtime, and -- >> you -- my comment on when the argentine army began to take women troops, women into the army, one of the generals commented that the thing to note is that the women are infinitely more qualified and prepared than the men because this was not a new opportunity for leadership for those women who had not had opportunities. they had the education and so forth but no opportunities for a leadership. >> we wouldn't be as prepared today if we didn't have women

make the contribution, but when you talk about women dying duty, infan tray, that's where i draw the line but we'll talk about that another time. the point i want to make is that the younge -- young people, helping to change. that's going on in this country and all over the world. so, again, i think we have some great opportunities here. but our policy has to be consistent. our policies towards latin america have not been very consistent in the 50 years i've been fooling around with the topic. thank you all very much. have a great holiday season and a super new year and come back. [applause]

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[inaudible conversations] >> if you missed any of this discussion ill will be available shortly in c-span video library. go to c-span.org to watch it coming up, remarks from the former cia chief, david petraeus, talk about global challenges and leadership. from george washington university, hive at 6:00 p.m. president obama shortly will be holding a year-end news conference before going on vacation with his family for the holidays. you can watch that live in a couple of minutes, scheduled for

2-15 eastern and also on c-span. we'll open our lines after that. we're looking live at the lobby of trump tower, new york city. government officials, business executives, making their way to mid-town manhattan to meet with the president-elect and his team. we'll watch the scene for just a little bit. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversation]

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[inaudible conversations] >> lots of lookers, people stopping to take pictures of the media.

secretary jeh johnson was in lobby. we assume he was town to brief the president-elect trump. you can watch this feed live from trump power on our web site, c-span2.org. >> follow the transition of government as president-elect protect selects his candidate and the republicans and democrats prepare for the next congress. we al'll take you to key evented. watch on demand at c-span. >> sad night at 10:00 p.m. eastern, on word "after words," george town university professor james brennan looks at the failure of political systems and calls for a change how

government runs. >> tearness doesn't get you to democracy. it why don't people want that? they think it won't work very well and lead to a bad outcome. probably right. you have to start asking, well, how are you going to weigh fairness versus the quality of the outcome. >> on sunday, at 3:00 p.m. eastern, the before columbus foundation presents the american book awards which recognizes outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of the diverse community. then at 5:00 p.m. eastern, jonathan zimmerman, professor of history and education at the university of pennsylvania, who argues that free speech is under threat on campuses.

>> the problem is the second kind of pc, that doesn't taboo words but taboos ideas. right? if 40% of the faculty is opposed to -- are not hearing from them. >> go to c-span2.org for the complete weekend schedule. >> the washington international trade association hosted a panel on the future of trade policy from the incoming trump administration, this is an hour and 25 minutes.

[inaudible conversations] >> good morning, everyone thank you for being here this morning. i'm the executive director of the washington international trade association. we're delighted that so many of you joined news person, and pleased to welcome c-span and their viewers who are interested in international trade and learning about the future of trade. before we begin our program, i'd like to thank our partners at the ronald reagan building on

who worked with us on this event. i'd also like to give you watching a heads up about our coming events, including for the first time, ambassador mike froman will be giving his final keynote address as u.s. trade organization, and that same evening we'll hey the annual members meeting and welcome to the new year party. later in january and into february we plan to hold discussions about some of the hot issues being talked about today, including nafta, china, and the trade implications of u.s. tax reform efforts which we're hearing lot about. since the election people have been asking bet future of u.s. trade policy, and with our nextgen trade.

we all have an idea of the direction of u.s. trade policy but is a not made in a vacuum. made in the context of global and globalizing economy. that is what today's discussion is about and why it's so important. in order to understand the future of american trade policy we need to understand what is happening globally in international trade investment. today's panel will help shed light on that topic. i'm pleased to turn the microphone over to my friend, steve lamar. >> thank you very much. good morning, thank you for coming out on such a cold, windy morning here in washington, dc. i think there's no question that the next couple of years is going to be a time of change. certainly a time of a lot of anticipation on trade and international trade, international competitiveness. certainly i'm getting a lot of questions from the folks with whom i work and i know probably a lot of people have a lot of

questions out there as well about what is going to happen, what are we going to see occur. we have a great panel of experts here, but this is the panel that's not going to answer to the questions. those questions are going to come after january -- be answered after january 3'm when the new congress takes office and then after january 20th, after inauguration, and we'll start to see some of the campaign rhetoric and the policy pronouncements in the tweets become translated into policies, actionable events and so forth and that will be an opportunity for folks to learn lot more about what is going to happen. what this panel can do is help us understand what is the reaction around the world, how are our friends, trading partners around the world in very key areas, observing the events as they're unfolding in washington and the country, the news that's coming out on a daily basis and how are they reacting to it and planning for it and their perspectives and

what they think should happen. so, with that'll introduce them. i'll ask each of them to speak for five to seven minutes and then we'll have questions afterwardses. so, they do have answers for some of the questions. just not sure which answer they'll have. so, first to my immediate right is wendy cutler, vice president and managing director of the age of policy institute of the washington, dc office. she joins the age of policy institute following three decades as a diplomat and the office of -- she was acting deputy usgr working on trade negotiation in the asian region. annabell, part previously she served as costa ricas free trade and contributed to attracting over 140 new foreign investment

protects. damion levy in the middle there is the head of the trade and agricultural section european delegation in washington, dc. before he was a part of the u.s. trade commission. he is been with the commission since 2001. bobby pittman to the right. he was the vice president of infrastructure, private sector and regional integration at the african development bank. he previously held serb senior positions at u.s. government agencies and worked an african policies including the national security council, treasury and state deposit and white house. and last but not least kenneth

smith ramos. he was coordinator general for international affairs and mexican ministry. ... with my former boss, ambassador michael froman so i can't wait for that event. that should be very interesting. this morning i wanted to share with you kind of what i'm hearing from asia trip i am just back from asia. i'm a daily contact with my new

position with former asian trade officials come with current trade officials and other opinion leaders in the area. so i wanted to share with you kind of their perspectives, recognizing there is not one asia. asia is a huge continent. there are a lot of different views but there are some common threads and i wanted to maybe go through a few. the first is what we are hearing is that asia really wants continued u.s. leadership and engagement on the trade agenda. second, they are very concerned about rising protectionism. and here we're not just talking about tariffs. there are also concerned about maybe a robust use of youth trade laws. third is they are concerned not only about things that have been said with respect to possible actions or measures against asian countries like china, but

they have broader concerns. they're concerned, for example, and i mentioned this to ken as we were coming up to the stage, about what will happen with nafta. let's remember a lot of asian countries have moved from production to mexico and it would be affected by nafta. and so i would just sit while this panel, were speaking about different regions, there's a lot of overlap with respect to the impact of any measures taken on trade through the whole global trading system. also they want a stable u.s.-china relationship. this isn't just trade. it's kind of overall, but in the trade arena, china is the biggest trading partner, maybe the u.s. second for certain countries it is reversed, but if they feel they will be in the middle if there's any back-and-forth in terms of retaliation or measures between the two countries. and finally i would say like

everyone in the trade community, they are waiting to see who will be on the trade team and not just at the most senior levels but at the deputy levels and other officials. what i wanted then in my raining ministry to talk about -- my remaining minutes to talk about tpp and how asian countries are responding to president-elect trump's recent announcement viewers will withdraw from tpp kind of on day one of his administration there's a lot of concern. the tpp countries feel they get a lot of heavy lifting. they spent a lot of political capital responding to u.s. priorities in the negotiations, and so right now they feel that the u.s. is not living up to what they had hoped for. i will just say a number of tpp countries are still going forward with the ratification process. most recently japan passed tpp in their diet.

just last week. and as someone who spent a lot of time negotiating the japan part of the tpp agreement, if you are told me a few years ago that we would end up where we are now, that will be withdrawn from tpp and japan with the passing of this agreement through their diet, i would not have believed you. so how are tpp countries countrr what options do they have responded to what's going on in the region? and not just tpp countries but non-tpp countries as well. first as i mentioned, a number plan to go ahead and proceed with the ratification. japan, new zealand just a few weeks ago ratified tpp. australia has announced they are going head. mexico and others. vietnam conversely has announced it's not going to proceed with the ratification, but a very interesting vietnam has said they will go forward with passing reform legislation in a

lot of the areas that have been called for under tpp. and other countries i hope as they upgrade their fda's width of the countries in the region or the enter into new fda's or through the negotiations will try and push tpp standards. a number of tpp countries including primers abi has said they're going to try and persuade the president-elect to take a fresh look at tpp and really understand how it advances u.s. interest both on the economic front that your strategic front but also regional interest. other tpp countries are talking about could they do tpp without the united states? all the 11 agree with excluding the united states but keeping the door open for the united states to join later. but most important right now i think a lot of countries are

looking at their plan b in the region. a lot of these countries, they rely on trade. they recognize that trade contribute to growth and jobs. they want to attract foreign and investment. there looking at other investment in the region and what we are already seeing is they are really stepping up their activities and ongoing negotiations that i think will also see new negotiations announced in the coming weeks and months. as long as tpp was going on and looked alive, a lot of these countries just did not have the wherewithal to kind of get all the resources, all their attention to a number of negotiations. but when tpp i sidelined as it s now, they will have the resources. they will have the attention and the personnel to put into other negotiations. the regional comprehensive economic partnership is the most viable alternative to ppp, and

negotiation underway for about five years now including 16 asian countries, not including the united states but including china and india. negotiators just met last week in indonesia. they are making good progress after all talking about concluding these talks next year. year. a number of people have called china negotiated in the region. i don't agree. china now has a most gotten a renewed interest in this negotiation and is really stepping up its engagement as well. there's other negotiations that are underway to japan and the eu are trying to see if they can at least conclude that agreement in principle by the end of this year and the chief negotiator from the eu is in tokyo, en route to you tokyo. australia and indonesia are working on an fda.

new zealand and china just agreed that the going to upgrade their fta. canada and china are exploring an fda. the malaysian trade minister mir just expressed interest in entering into an fta with mexico, and the list goes on and on. maybe i can just conclude, and you are looking at me so i'm sure my time is almost up, the one issue on what to put on the table is when the president-elect announced he wanted to withdraw from tpp, he said he was more interested in bilateral deals. i know there's a lot of discussion in the trade community about the merits of bilateral deals, can we move in that direction and what weighted mean? i think a lot of countries in asia are also examining that and try to think through these issues. the one country in particular whose name comes up when people talk about bilateral is japan.

and in my conversation with the japanese they made it very clear that they are focused on tpp. they believe getting the regional benefits of this deal are very important and with the deal having just past the diet this is the course they want to go. so i'm going to conclude there and just past the mic. >> so thank you very much for having me here, and i'm going to talk a little bit about latin america. in the fairness to asia it is of course a diverse region as we know. so when we talk about latin american, we need to keep that in mind. that diversity manifest itself in several ways but to important for discussion is one, the structure of their productive assistance with some countries more oriented towards commodity production and other towards more orientation radical change. another difference to their

trade policies with some of them of course being more open than others and i will come back to this. having said that, i think there are three key features in terms of the state of play of trade and investment in latin america. first is that there are 77 free-trade agreements latin american countries entered into. most of them in the past maybe 10, 12, 13 years. of this 77, 11 are with the u.s., and the fta's an average coverage about 50% of latin america trade. additionally, three latin american country as we know, ask agoask, chile and peru, are parf tpp and at least i believe tomorrow were interested in becoming part of it, colombia and costa rica. now, in addition to that, latin america has also been very active in terms of their

relations with china and asia more broadly. three latin american countries have agreements with china, chile, peru and costa rica. they've also been very active with the european union. there are agreements with a number of countries in the region. and finally latin america integration is also been undergoing very important changes and i like to highlight the specific alliance. this effort that includes mexico, chile, colombia and peru but increasingly more latin american countries including argentine and i will come to this, have expressed interest in the pacific alliance. the pacific alliance is a very interesting model because it is basically presenting a model of not only free flow of goods but also services capital and labor, particularly qualified labor.

so this is an interesting model to watch in the region. it is also interesting that last time i count there were over 30 countries that were in the pacific alliance. including many countries in asia. i think in the future this is an important connecting point between latin america and asia. second feature that i want to highlight is that there has been, there's this globalization backlash in some advanced countries. some countries in latin america are going in the opposite direction. this is the case of the americas third countries. i would like to highlight the case of argentina, because in argentina they are undergoing major positions and economic policy. they reduced export taxes.

if streamlined imports. they have eliminated controls over remittances, and the country is in a full-fledged effort to reintegrate into global markets and attract foreign direct investment. i think that is a very important change in the region. as a matter of fact the americas third country reignited again negotiations with the eu that had been sold for a number of years. so the third feature that i wat to mention is that there are others in the region that are not part of this efforts, notably venezuela, bolivia and ecuador, though ecuador also negotiated an agreement with the eu. but there is a question i think at this point as to how sustainable the economic model of some of these countries are in going forward. now having said that it is clear that latin america continue, most latin american countries continue to face import challenges in terms of the

commodities, they need to further integrate, increase productivity. very recently the world bank came out with a study that the future of latin america, not that the super cycle of commodities is over, the future of latin america is actually in trading with the global economy. so i was saying interestingly enough while all of this is happening in the u.s., the eu and in other places, in latin america there is a lot of excitement for what trade and investment have to offer. now, in terms of what the future means, i think that latin america is increasingly more a land of opportunity. despite the commodity prices slow down, despite all the challenges from economic perspective some countries are facing, you see stable country,

macroeconomic perspective. you see consumers, middle-class, that, that is grown tremendously in the region. a consumer class that i have to say by smalle his more from the. than from china. it still oriented to the u.s., but these countries lik are to i believe have taken their destiny in their own hands. and they consider the u.s. a very important trading partner, but they are also looking to other regions in the world. again, europe, china and asia. peru just announced they would like to revise the agreement with china, to modernize that agreement. i wouldn't be surprised if of the countries in the region would also go that way. let's remember that china has also interesting investments in some latin american countries. so i believe you will see a strengthening in the region. and finally this intro latin

american integration process can particularly as represented in the pacific alliance i believe will continue to grow and to expand. so you will have a latin america i believe a more mature trading partner, a more stable trading partner that is of course very interested in working with the united states, but i will not wait for the united states but will continue to look at europe, at china, at asia at asia and it intro latin american integration to find opportunities to grow and open new opportunities. spirit thank you. welcome to all. a few words on europe next year. 2017 is kind of halfway through cycle of five years did we started new european alliance, , new-paragraph\new paragraph in 2014, new commission and new elections in may 2019. so it's a the year of delivering

results. this week counterpart of the commission agreed on the priorities next year on the economy, doubling the strategic strength for investment, completing the banking union, dressing on our borders, a better port of patrol. reform, migration reform and so forth. so it's going to be a year of very intense activity, vat reform, copyright reform and telecom reform spirit you can expect a lot coming out from european institutions, from brussels next year. on trade policy you will see the same first of all i would like to remind everybody went six countries decide to great the european economic communities in 1996, the imagery saw if you create one common market you need to have interleague you need to have one common commercial policy and then one

internationally. it's just not possible to do separate deals on trade policy with all countries and that is still the case today with a 28 countries. if you, you want to do bilateral with europe, you do bilateral with the european union. next year we will harvest the results of negotiations with our canadian partners. we expect european parliament the first quarter and so it should enter into force very soon after. vietnam next year as well we will ratify vietnam. there will also ratify the singapore which is been at the court of justice after it will come out of the european code of justice were to ask a question on sharing of power, where does the line, where he can we draw the line between the powers of european union and powers of member states on essentially investment protection.

then we continue negotiating agenda. wendy mentioned japan fta, chief negotiator is in tokyo trying to wrap up an agreement in principle. in any event we will have to wrap up the negotiations next year. we have with mexico, also we find very experienced negative theaters after having done tpp negotiations and we need to move as fast as possible. negotiation is active on our side but also in asia relaunched negotiations with indonesia. we still have negotiations with china, with mean more. and i don't mention them all. so very active negotiating agenda from european union next year we also continue to reform

our trade defense initiative. you may seem this week was an agreement among member states for the first time in more than 10 years on how to reform our laws and in particular what kind of exceptions can we create to the role. creating power for the commission to sell. we know that it's been an issue for and in some countries. 2017 i think will also be a year to reflect on the perception of globalization, what do we need to change on this in trade and broader than this, i think it's quite clear and number of member states there is a very significant backlash against more market integration against what is happened. maybe this is where i should mention of course that next year as you know we won't launch brexit talks with united kingdom. the talks are being prepared on

both sides and we will wait for the plan of the united kingdom. what is the destination, what do they have in mind for these talks. and, of course, we have a ministerial wto in point is a race at the end of the year when will also be looking with all the geopolitical partners on a successful outcome and it's quite clear think the united states will have to be active to move this forward. we hope to continue and conclude next year. twto last topics, ttip and the transition. on ttip as you know we have been sitting there in half years and achieved a lot of results, a lot of work, in particular in the regulatory cluster we've agreed

on how to -- [inaudible] we stand ready with the new administration has done its policy review to resume the talks to see whether or not they want to continue these negotiations. we think we can get a good agreement for both. what is being done now is we're taking snapshots in each of the areas, 20 or more areas of what we've achieved, what are the areas of agreement, this agreement so that we can properly resume if the u.s. is ready. with the new administration we have a lot of things to discuss. we have our companies are facing common challenges in emerging markets. there's work to be done on these various challenges. someone reminded me recently

compared to the last republican administration, this one at 16 years ago, this one is ahead of schedule, and so i think we will be patient and stand ready to talk to them. thank you. >> good morning. i think it's fair to say that even the most generous person in the room would not consider me a trade expert, especially amongst others appear. but as i thought about it, in in the sport i thought maybe that's appropriate to talk about the africa region, because i think it's fair to say that we haven't really been having u.s. africa strategic trade policy discussions or thinking for quite a long time. the policy discussion in the stem probably for 20 years is when is the uncle of renewal, to have the votes to continue it? that's basically i think the

find u.s.-africa trade policy for almost two decades. what i thought would be interesting then is to talk about some of the underlying dynamics at least that i see as a private equity investor that i think is going to potentially change some of those discussions. those discussions are not necessarily based on policymakers views in a vacuum they are based on policymakers views connected with the companies and the businesses that are actually happening between u.s. and africa. looking at trade data can really take it in a wrong direction. most of the trading relationship between the u.s. and africa come in some ways some parts of the world is defined by extracted and has been for some time bu bi think if you look at the diversity of the number, it's changing and changing quite a bit. if you take a big step back, i i think so for us as investors we are very data focused.

we have spatial statistics tool that helps us identify pockets of demographics and consumer behavior and spending power. and so for us we are very data-driven in terms of where we make our choices. and i think when you look at data-driven multinational, and look at their behavior in the last just five years. this i think is very recent and i think the more data-driven multinationals are at the front edge, you see them licking quite significant bets across africa and you already see yielding quite significant results. the one i think you're the most is general electric. when i was living in north africa, we would see the general electric team from time to time, very rarely. obviously probably on the infrastructure side of our portfolio at the african development bank i would say 60-70% 70% of the procurement was china. these are significant numbers, tens of billions of dollars and

after that it's primarily europeans, italians, french. and all of those countries and their associated trade experts i think were taken very strategic views on the agreement. most u.s. companies were not even competing in this process. not even submitting bids. you look at your electric today. i would say 2010 there were doing maybe 1,000,000,000 in revenues in africa. today they are doing right billion. that number is expected to be 10 billion within the coming few years. -- 5 billion. i think when you think about java electrics growth of their top line globally, that's where the growth is coming from. and i think when you look at large multinationals that are looking to increase their top line, these are the ones that are making a better africa. another example that some people are not talking about as much what you think is pretty dramatic is anheuser-busch owned

by 3g. big-time data people. big-tim.big-time responders to d they just bought sab miller and africa for $100 billion. that's a debt. that's a bit on africa in terms where they think some other top line growth is going to come in the coming years. i think also talks about how the trade dynamics are going to change quite considerably in terms of from extract is to consumer and other types of products. the numbers are there. you don't have to look out too far to say the top three most popular countries in the world are in africa. two of the largest cities in the world in the coming decade. i'm from south florida site get a lot of cuba talk all the time in my house and in my neighborhood. my response is always i love cuba, i love visiting cuba.

the market of legos is about the equivalent of cuba. that gap is not going to nato. nigeria has another 20 cities that are going to have more than 1 million people, i million consumers when i look at those trends just demographic trends come economic growth trends, it's going to drive a lot of a large corporate, their behavior at a think that's going to follow and create a much more strategic dialogue on use africa trade policy. i think in some ways i think it's fair to say we are behind on this. as an investor i would say the chinese have bilateral investment treaties in almost every country in africa. the germans, the french. a number of european countries. i think have bilateral investment treaties and maybe three or four countries across the 55 and most of those were negotiated in the eighties. most of those were still driven. i think it's like for me i look

at the top and isaac what truly going on at the bottom that's driving it? the bottom issued to quite a bit. the other thing i would mention which maybe will sound a little out of left field if i'm not already in left field, is i think, think about the sharing economy i something we talk latr in the u.s. was its uber, mbb ai think about it both ways, both ensuring of assets and supply chains but also the ability to aggregate small items. we are invested in a company in your, marketplace for high-end african fashion, luxury fashion from africa with about 30 designers. most of those designers were not shipping the goods to the u.s. previously. the ability to share in existing supply chain, the ability to aggregate people have small production create art is not typed brands, the billy cannot

have too high or a new york big marketing firm and use social media and get your brand out. our lead designer -- the ability to do that and have that reach and now become part of use africa trade story, you think about how those voices are now going to play into a trade policy discussion. in my opinion we are moving from a place where you had a very small number of interested parties, primarily extractive, and that's not entirely fair because certainly their industry has been very aggressive i think in exploring and thinking through kind of the africa opportunity. but i think historically it is primarily been a small handful defining the discussion and now we're moving to what looks to be a think quite democratic discussion from both larger multinationals but also small players that i think another going to start thinking about trade, think about global markets in a different way. i think in africa to also drive

a lot of, i think more so than in the u.s. or in europe, they've also drive public opinion. i would argue probably more people are going to listen to a maggio and depression. these folks are becoming very much global traders. i think that's a dynamic that not fully taken into account some as discussion and certainly a big driver in the africa region. >> thank you very much. thank you very much for the invitation to come and to give the perspective of mexico on north america and where we are headed with the north american free trade agreement. i do believe we're at an important crossroads into a relationship within north america. over 20 years of free trade we managed to create probably the greatest free trade area in the world. trade has tripled between the three countries, now over a trillion dollars. between the u.s. and mexico that because reached $530 billion. we've increased dramatically the

flow of investment between all three countries. but beyond the numbers one aspect there was exceeded all expectations of anybody was involved in a nafta negotiations at the time was making predictions as to where we would be headed within the nafta region is the level of supply chain integration with created. the way we have created interconnected industrial clusters across mexico, the u.s. and canada where we exchange products and where products cross the border eight or nine times before winding up in a final product that is either consumed in the region or exported to the rest of the world with a very dramatic competitive edge, these of the other countries when you have that level of division of labor and enter industry trade. that's one of the key elements and that's why when mexico exports to the world not just within the nafta are within its network of 11 trade agreements in 46 countries, 40% of what we export comes from the united states to we're building products together.

we are working towards increasingly competitive in together in the manufacture of north american products so that is a key element we must take into consideration when we analyze where we should be headed with nafta. look at in terms of a lot of the talk that's out there in terms of the impact of trade agreements and jobs, look at the fact 5,000,000 jobs in the u.s. depend on trade with mexico and another nine with trade with candidate. almost 6 million jobs are related to trade with number one and number two customers in the world, canada and the united states. that's a very peculiar element of north american integration that have to be taken into consideration. there's the employment aspect of companies and use exporting to the nafta partners increasingly in the case of mexico over the last 15 years with almost 50,000,000,000 dollars of acutely foreign direct investment from mexican

companies into the united states that great over 125,000 jobs. these means jobs in specific committees. instant the message out there what are the benefits of nafta we must delve deeper into the numbers are not just say at the $530 billion level that we heard about but talk about how for example, mexican companies, steel manufacturer is supporting 700 jobs in ohio and in missouri by investing in plants that produce construction materials, not bolts, nails, et cetera, that utilize mexicans to enter able to become more competitive vis-à-vis other countries that do not have those linkages to mexico. we have many examples like that. mining companies in arizona supporting 800 jobs in the community that 600 population. so examples like that are peppered throughout the united states both in terms of the presence of mexican investment and the benefits of mexican companies that export, u.s. congress of x boat to mexico or

candidate. those are big benefits we have to get out and speak about, both government and private sector. when we're looking at what we call nafta two point oh, when we go from here from what we have built cracks there's three main pillars. doing a realistic fact-based assessment of the impact of the north american free trade agreement on the economies of all three countries at a given example specific on the benefits for the u.s. we have to analyze that deeply and distribute this information, get out there so people understand what impact it has in their day-to-day life. the second big element is the recognition of course that are trade agreement can be modernized. it was negotiated over 25 years ago with many of the disciplines we incorporate in the negotiations with tpp that didn't exist, elements and intellectual property rights protection, the digital economy, state owned enterprises, a whole

list of issues that we can analyze. there's a strong cooperative agenda that exist between mexico and the u.s. and also with canada of course, an agenda to work on elements to increase competitiveness of the region. in other words, we eliminated tariffs over 20 some years of trade between mexico and the u.s. and canada now the next 20 years have to ask how do we reduce the cost of transactions between our countries. that involves areas such as increasing border efficiency, investing in infrastructure in the border, regulatory cooperation, looking at elements we're analyzing and other key areas in the world where we are negotiating which is, i mentioned the pacifica life. the movement of professionals. that's something we're not been able to dance over the years within the nafta region but we should accelerate the pace looking at all these elements to actually build on what we have and strengthen it and not move backwards. third of all we have to understand trade is a win-win

proposition. we have to start getting away from this argument trade is a zero-sum game. if my neighbor does well that means i do badly. if i export its okay, if i import its not okay. all all those arguments are economic default and he did not translate into the rallies of what we are seeing in the job creation in any of the three countries so we need at that assessment clearly. we want to have a very constructive dialogue with the new administration coming in along the lines of what we have described but at the same time we are not standing idle. we are moving ahead with an aggressive program of trade liberalization and diversification. we were members of the tpp as was mentioned. we have the tpp built in our senate being analyzed and possibly voted on in the next session in the spring in mexico. we have to analyze what will happen if the u.s. will be able to join or if we will have to have a different type of arrangement within asia-pacific. the advantages of tpp as wendy

was mentioning, you have a region region that will be the region that will be the engine of growth over the next few years. over the next 25 years asia-pacific while at almost 1 billion and have people to the middle class. these are consumers and you want to be in the front line when that opportunity opens up and it is already opening up. we will continue either through the tpp and/or looking at options whether it's bilaterally or other plural lateral arrangements. the pacifica life is a key element because i think one mexico'mexico is able to engagea fully open manner with countries in latin america that have the same values and the same pursuit of an open trade environment in the economy. i think there's a lot we can continue to do that in that region and that's why a lot of these countries that are observers of the pacifica lights are interested in what's happening.

given a lot of the changes that are taking place domestically in brazil and argentina, there's an increased engagement with these two countries to look at options to really enhance our trade with them. as damien mentioned the everywhere to modernize and strengthen our free-trade agreement with the european union entrance of market access and many other disciplines can also be a great because it's an agreement that is in effect since the year 2000. the reality as wendy was saying otheat the countries are not stopping. competition is fierce. trying to set the rules of the game going forward. and so we have to do the same in north america and that's what i say we are a very important crossroads in our history. we have a chance to be the most competitive region of the world but that is only going to happen if we actively both government,, private sector, political actors at all levels really do a fair fact-based analysis on what trade brings to the region and how we can become more competitive going forward. because competition is not going

to stop it. thank you spirit thank you. that was awesome and thank you to the whole panel. we went around the worl around n about 30 minutes. i really appreciate that. it's clear i think in the comments that the rest of the world is not standing still and that there is a robust embrace of trade and the role trade place in creating jobs and bringing benefit to the countries even as increasing concerns about globalization are increased and we're seeing opportunities particularly in africa and that's interested to hear your perspectives. we are going to throw it up to the audience for questions, and while you're thinking of a a question i just want to throw one question back to you all that kind of buil building someg that ken said, which is clearly one of the things i think we need to do in the united states is a better job of educating the american public, the american worker, the american consumer, all the stakeholders on what does trade do both positively

and negatively? that central to the mission which is to educate folks on trade and ken midget will be doing that the next initiative with started that you are the kind of plot that where we're going to go in trade over the next generation. so let me ask you all, drawing upon the perspective of the regions for which we are presenting, what do you think we should be doing in terms of doing a better job of educating americans about trade? when we have elections for 12 years from now, the candidates are trying to outdo each other on how much they like trade as opposed to the trade enforcement at the trade protectionist rhetoric that we heard. >> i think that's a great point at its something obviously everyone is talking about in the trade community because we haven't done a good job communicating these benefits.

this isn't a new recognition, though i can say to my years of working at ustr there were efforts through the years to really convey the benefits in a much more understandable form. i think from my perspective what's really needed, and ken was getting at a bit, actually talking about specific plans, specific workers, the number of workers, getting small businesses out there but really conveying the benefits in a much more tangible way. i think that would be extremely helpful. i also think that the time is coming for the global trading system partners to kind of get together and to talk about this whole issue of globalization, share experiences, share information on adjustment programs that they are putting into effect at work, that don't work. but i think the whole social safety net issue really needs to

be focused on, and i think think it's something that everyone could benefit from learning from what others do. >> i think wendy's suggestions are of course very much to the point. i think deconstructing the opposition to globalization more broadly is important. because if you look at what's going on in the region, there are different elements that are at the basis of that opposition. some of it is related to trade agreementagreement but it's bey. part of it may be related to the content of the agreement. part of it is more related to the perceived implications of the agreements, the distributi distribution, the impact of the agreement. part of it may be just lack of interest.

part of it may be concerned about the transition maybe from north to south, south or from west to east. part of it may be related to the perception that lack of control of ways of life in certain places. so there may be different elements to it, and i think it's important to understand what is driving the opposition, to be able with facts and evidence come back and expect some of the things that are going on. there's one particular aspect which i think merits a lot of discussion and i believe it has been discussed which is also, what is the role of technology in the changing manufacturing landscape? because part of the effects that are attributed to trade in the public discourse are more related to technology. so this is an important conversation to be had.

finally, i believe that it's very hard for trade to carry all the weight of the burden of economic and social -- it's not possible. so looking at other complementary policy centers and the rule they may play, considering policies in the area, ca competitors but also looking in social safety nets and others, education, skills, others are also quite important. >> just very briefly just to consummate a little bit. i think what we knew was getting getting at is very important is the fact that trade community, for so we cannot be shy about talking positively about trade. trying to explain what it does but going at the local level. as i do we need need to get beyond the big numbers, the bigger drafts and really telling the story of what trade actually does in each community. also the point of view of the private sector are strategies some companies have begun to

implement to identify in their workers paychecks. what percentage what to do is related to trade. it is impossible to believe that workers in the port of long beach or up in washington, they work all day on really shipping products all across the world, and at night they go and to participate in demonstrations against trade. there's a complete disconnect between what they're doing in the jobs and the perception that this is all due to international trade. so if we break this overall perception that trade is negative we are only going to be able to give her able to get to each person until the what the story is. it's a tough task because when people enjoying their ipads, their cars, the plasma tvs, they don't associate that to trade. but when the committee loses 10 or 100 jobs, there's a quick desire to try to find the culprit. it's hard to say the country you lost your job do is

productivity, called in many instances, things that are intangible. and then you turn toward specific issues and affordably trade has been taken up as a flag against all the bills in the economic uncertainty that exist in certain communities. we need to advance in the education element both at the level of the private sector working with their workers and the command in general in telling the story, but also on a larger scale what when you were saying also is the issue of really addressing actively the notion that we need to look at whether it is displacement. there's a study by ball state university that talks about manufacturing jobs lost in the u.s. 87% is not due to trade. let's look at that the other way around. maybe 13% isn't what does that mean in terms of dislocation and what can we do, what type of social safety nets in a complee rethinking of what it means to really retrain workers? is not just a question of

payment because you lost your job, perhaps preparing you to transit into a new job of the 21st century economy. that involves a lot of analysis and i think it can be done. >> so we will go out to the audience. if you have a question, please raise your hand. i'm going to ask you to follow the three rules we have here at wita. state your name and your affiliation, that you ask a brief question and that you actually ask the question in the form of a question. so if we can all follow those rules we can get to a lot. so if the are any out there, and if you are shy i can toss another question to the panel. over here. if you can wait for a microphone first. >> barbara. i would like to ask each of the panelists, given that we understand that the message in u.s. public has not been

presented well for a very long time, i remember when nafta was first going into operation. the canadians you to go around town and say, there's a secret but nobody in washington knows it. nafta is working. but for some reason the americans don't want to talk about it. because the understands have been so bad in public, we have an incoming president who has used the argument reflecting public opinion as a wedge issue in getting elected. he may be open to some arguments that you are presented. if you had 50 minutes to talk to mr. trump, what would you tell him? [laughter] >> or a tweet, either. [laughter]

>> no one wants to go first. >> well, first off i wouldn't tell him i worked for ustr for 30 years. [laughter] i think one of the point that ken made earlier, that's what i thought thought he would go first, is let's look at the facts and let's have a review and let's look at what these agreements to do and what they don't do. you know, one of the unfortunate things about tpp, for example, if that it was concluded in the middle of a presidential campaign season. that was not the plan we were going to conclude it a lot earlier but we were great negotiator and we knew the deal that was on the table two years earlier wasn't one we were prepared to take home. so we waited, okay? we got a good deal but, unfortunately, the timing was really bad and tpp kind of became the manifestation

everything that was wrong with trade and wrong with globalization. so when people were on the floor of the various campaigns with their anti-tpp posters come if you ask any of them what was in tpp, no one really knew and no one really cared. so i think what i would recommend is kind of we take a step back, look at what's in this agreement, what's not in the agreement. we look at what's going on in the asia-pacific region, and when it may be headed and what may be headed with us or without us, and then we also look, as anabel was saying, let's look at the displaced workers and the people who may be left behind in this and let's find the appropriate policies to address their valid concerns but recognizing not doing the tpp is not the answer. it's not going to help them. who is going to follow? >> thank you.

i would simply say that for any government mexico the u.s. or canada is looking for opportunities for economic growth to increase employment in your country. trade is not the problem or the challenges of globalization are it is the solution but it is a mechanism that will help us to grow the economy because the majority of the customers of the world are outside of north america and that the realization that went understand that we have to understand the history that throughout history countries that have opened up to trade have prospered and those who haven't have not. so there's this important historical lesson. the second thing i would say to an administration coming in and wanting to look at both the operation of the government as you would to a business, mexico and canada are your top customers. we are your top clients. mexico is not a country that comes to simply as for concessions we work together with the u.s. we sell a lot to the u.s. would we buy more from the u.s.

and all of the bric countries combined and all of western europe combined, so that has to be valued and we have to work together. as i said competition is fierce, so strength in numbers. canada, mexico and u.s. building products that are better and cheaper and can compete better worldwide and generate more employment in the united states. >> i will say a few words but i would never talk to him probably. probably. but i will say a few words, first of all there's an opportunity to reconcile american public, in particular the opinion in the states he won by surprise with globalization and with trade. by doing a number of things. people vote against trade agreements, protest against trade agreements because they do that they cannot protest against change just like every year factory becomes more productive and, therefore, either you produce more, you keep your stepper every year you have to

lay off people. that's just a natural evolution of productivity. there is an opportunity between proven programs. talking from european perspective, american companies invested $2 trillion in europe and vice versa. treatment is jobs well-paying jobs on both sides depend on this investment and trade relationship. and we shouldn't waste time to improve that. thank you. >> in some ways i would follow the theme from my neighbor here about competition being fierce. i think, you know, in a lot of ways in the africa context i would welcome a new lens from a number of fronts, a strategic lens.

as i said i think, and i'm little bit different i think on the africa side. i think local voters don't want to support any other policy related to u.s.-africa, you know what i mean? you have a misunderstanding. you might actually have animosity so much more than trade i feel like in the africa world when we go out and talk to folks in terms of what kind of policies we support and what people support a pepfar, something like pepfar support a broad look at it wasn't but there's a lot of policymakers who push and took a lot of risk and passed it. now people supported because they understand the positive stories only later on they supported, as the message gets out. they were not supported at the time from a policy perspective. in the africa context we all know it. chinese are kind of growing their market share every day. i think there's number of european countries that are doing quite well. india has a very strategic view on the continent and how they're going. when you look at the u.s. i

think it's not just for a trade policy perspective but also the support of elements when you think about opec, they could not ask him which somebody sings or are actually been debated in terms of their visit in reality we are still so slow in terms of execution. when i was in the infrastructure space and we would compete with the chinese, most of the time we would lose based on timing. chinese are going to be able to like site and deliver a road in less than two years. you're a sponsor from the u.s. saying i may or may not be able to get priority timing, stick with me, another year of this, i know the of other things. these are folks that are also trying to win elections in the local constituencies and the difference between four years and six years is losing. so i think competition is very fierce and i'm not sure that's the mindset that we had taken, and so we have taken kind of a

different mindset antagonistic towards a lot of these tools. i think a lot of our companies are certainly falling further behind in that competition i don't think the rest of the world is taking that same antagonistic toward some of tools supporting their companies entering the africa market. >> i think maybe three points. one is that to make america great again, you need more trade, not less trade. the second point is that trade is not a zero-sum game. particularly in the world today. it's not that country a exports its own car or each and every part of the car is made in country a to country b, and then there's this question between the cars from country a and the cars from country b. trade doesn't work like that in the world today. and the third point is that there is a very valid, there's a

very valid point in being concerned, for those who are either losing from trade in specific communities in specific regions for those of nothing able to connect to the benefits of trade. so the question there is more what is the best instrument to achieve that objective? trait is not your best instrument to achieve that objective. because even if tariffs are raised on imports of a particular country, it will not compact to your region. or if it comes back it will be done in many cases most of the processes will be done by robots and not necessarily by all of those people that you're thinking of. so think about the policies that will actually address some of those concerns and work very actively to limit those policies. >> laura white with consulting group.

thank you to wita and all of the panels today for their informative. i just have a quick question. knowing that there's been strong interest in the u.s., uk bilateral post brexit, how possible is it that ttip could resume before brexit is completed? thank you. >> i think the difficulty for any third country to negotiate a trade agreement with the uk is that you will want to know what is, what you are negotiating from. what are the preferences you need, what is that tariffs schedule you are negotiating from what is your opening on services, what is your opening on procurement the uk is giving to the rest of the world and the rest of the world has agreed with the uk? ..

>> and until you know all these things, those will be highly speculative talks. therefore, if you want to do a deal with the uk through the eu, it's in the european union, thank you. >>. [inaudible] >> thank you, don phillips consulting . perhaps this question has already been answered, i got here a little late. does anybody in this group think there's a chance the administration will change his mind on tpp? second question,

president-elect trump has said he's interested in doing bilateral fda and i think the multilateral types. any ideas of what might be first on the list of possible fta's, possible bilateral fta's and any sense on whether they consider the eu to be a bilateral agreement or a multilateral? thank you. >> hi don. great question. you didn't hear the rules. with respect to your first question, what might happen with tpp, my belief and it could be because i worked on it but also i think because i believe tpp advances are economic and strategic interests in the region. i don't think it's dead. right now, it's going to be

sidelined. i wouldn't be surprised if it comes back in some form in the new administration. i've seen this with other agreements. i worked on the chorus agreement associated with the bush administration and renegotiated under the obama administration. when the obama administration came and they were very critical of cora, they did a possible review of the agreement and figured out how they could improve it so it could receive support not only from congress but from the american public and from the uaw and that was successfully done. i know things are quite different now and the magnitude of frustration and concern about trade and about tpp is much greater than cora but i'm an optimist at heart and i have to believe there's a way forward. with respect to your question about bilaterals, i touched

on that. i don't think any of us know which countries may be of most interest to the new administration in negotiating bilaterals but some people around town are talking about land by rattler and as i mentioned earlier, to date japan has been pretty clear that it's not interested in a bilateral. that it's all the capital in tpp, it wants to get the regional benefits and really joined the tpp to help shape regional rules of the road. so that's where they are right now, whether this is going forward remains to be seen but i think they are putting their eggs in their basket, the basket is trying to stable against the new president about tpp has merits, is in the us interests and puts strategic interest and regional

interests andeconomic interests . >> another question on tpp, we supported tpp all along because we believe it's good for the region and our nation these agreements with japan. in four years, if we go through the negotiations with chile we will be the hub of the most impressive trade agreements. i think if the us wants to continue that, it would be in their interest and finally i think we have 15 agreements for the moment. 15 countries do see us as one block, one concentrate. as a result of the policy review they will probably

find the deal with the european union is one deal. >> back there, doug? >> hi. doug palmer with politico. i wanted to ask, there's some uncertainty about bun sr in the new administration, it would be a cabinet level administration or something in some departments, i wondered as someone who's worked there for a long time, what do you think is the impact on us negotiating ability because if it's not cabinet level how is it seen as subservient to congress and that if kenneth or damien

had anything on this, i mean from a qora perspective doesn't matter much for a foreign government who is negotiating ustr? >>. >> having been around these issues for a long time working for the government, i worked with many organizations to date and i understand that this debate is rearing its head again. i will say as a negotiator, for the american people, you don't want your negotiator to be empowered, you want them to be a senior, when you want them to have the main date to do what they want to do so if the us is going to be negotiating deals, we need to keep it at a cabinet level we need a minister to do this who can meet with other ministers at that level and particularly in the asian region , the level and rank

of these people is very important and it will be noticed around the world if it's now to demote the level of the top us negotiator for trade agreements. >> the only thing i would say about that is i worked with the best trade negotiators in the world, that's it. >> we need a negotiator in front of us who is indeed an executive level and will truly move forward and also from our american partners ... [inaudible] we negotiate in countries where you don't have a us negotiator.

>> hi brett for men. tpp, these deals didn't seem to alter or be put in the few freezer. for the more part because was struggling before that and tpp, what can be done with each of these different trade negotiations in the plural laterals to move them forward with the new administration other than just the education process, are there parts that can be taken away from them whether or not it's bilateral or executory arrangement? >> i guess people are going

to take that question under advisement and come back so, over here. this will probably be, this may be the last one. >> told steering, committee to support us trade laws. that name alone says that i'm coming to the question with a certain attitude. we are almost another hour and a half into another intelligent, well-informed discussion on trade, what the american people think about trade. one reference, one fair trade question . so can i conclude that everyone on this stage believes that there are no unfair trade practices that

live rise to the level of interest wincing trade foes in the united states or are the american people voting for trump because they feel they are not winning because they can't win ? are they wrong? >> why don't we take maybe two other questions , there's one back here. let's just package them all together. >> melinda st.louis and my question is for kenneth . in the context, i'm curious if there's any talk or anything that you could share about how the mexican government is perceiving any potential foreign renegotiations in terms of timeline. you expect that to happen right away in terms of the trump administration asking for that western mark how the mexican government would respond and what are the elements that the mexican government would be willing to renegotiate or not? >> and the last one over here.

>> hi, thanks. william new from intellectual property law in geneva and i'm tempted to ask, to say that for us auto will be elevated to the desk of president trump who said he will tear up all the agreements and renegotiate them himself but i'm not asking that. i was wondering yesterday in geneva, there was a reference by mister levie to the seatac agreement and the two parties announced or tried to gain support for a new investor state, eight multilateral investment court that they are trying to create . i don't know if the panelists are aware of that initiative yet or if there's any reaction to the idea of a multilateral investor state court, thank you. >> thank you, so let's do can, we will do the and aft a

question first and an up with the treaty defense under trademark. >> thank you very much, with regard to the nafta and what will happen, as i've said, mexico is willing and ready to engage in a constructive dialogue with the incoming administration. we favor the possibility of having discussions along the lines of how we strengthen the nafta, how we modernize it along the lines of what i've mentioned. disciplines that did not exist when nafta was negotiated and that has to be taken into consideration to bring up the agreements, the requirements of the 21st-century economy is just a really out reality and that's how we operate in all the different trade agreements that we are

negotiating, that we have negotiated. it's impossible to think you can simply however extrapolate what we have negotiated another trade agreement and bring it exactly as it is into the north american region. it has peculiarities of the region so in terms of the timeline, of course, we are working and analyzing what elements of nafta can be strengthened. were going for a progress of internal consultation both in the private sector, civil society and the like in the economy but you can look at some of the things we've done in other trade agreements for some of the key elements we are interested in. seeing that the world's 10th largest exporter, we all interested in being able to alleviate not only terrorist barriers that no longer exist within nafta with few exceptions but look at elements that facilitate trade. elements that go beyond the border, that help us get access to our product through the world and that some of the elements we are working within north america. in terms of the timing, it will be japan and the substance of what we discussed with the us will

also be from the perspective of the us and also canada, let's not forget about canada in the equation. but as i said, we are very open to working within the framework that allows us to strengthen successful free-trade agreements in the next five years. >> yes indeed, we've responded to the criticism in europe which was seen as privatized justice, giving excessive rights for state proceedings, arbitrators having conflicting interests on certain issues and we've proposed a modernized system which we agreed to with the canadians and within an appellate body but if you do that in tens of agreements, it creates a problem and so

the solution is to have a multiple investment court or you can have judges settling these disputes. >> this on tbi, i talked about reforming tbi that we are changing it to create exceptions to allow us access capacity or market portions in energy and so forth. the dream the imposed duties hired and trade defense. the other attack by proposing the removal of, i'm becoming technical here but the list of non-market economy countries that would change the rule. we need trade defense. you cannot do on one hand trade organization without a tbi or trade defense. [inaudible]

>> if i can add to that, i think the conversation should focus more on negotiations in different countries and different regions of the world we are engaged in but by no means less than critical importance how to draft unfair trade practices. my colleagues at usc are, at the commerce department or state or embassies abroad, they do this day in and day out because we need to make sure that after we put all of these, our efforts into negotiating trade agreements, we want to make sure our trading partners live up to them but we want to make sure that if there are unfair trade practices, they are giving our products and services out that are being addressed. i welcome president-elect trump and his emphasis on what he called kind of the enforcement issue and really strengthening that function in the us government under his upcoming administration. i think that's a very helpful

initiative and i think as a result, we're going to be seeing more cases filed both in the wto and more aggressive use of our trade laws and as long as in my view it's done in the context of living up to our rules that we've agreed to in the wto and elsewhere, then i think this is a very welcome step forward. >> great, well i think that's a good positive note to end the conversation on. i'd like to invite can back up to the podium. >> thank yousteve, thank you to our panelists . it's been a great conversation. we're looking forward to hosting more of these conversations in the months to come. that's what the us is going to be doing and we plan on eliminating some of those issues. we are very grateful to all of you for being here, thanks to all of you and watch the box for more we do events

coming up january 10. [applause]

>>. [inaudible conversation] >> coming up live later today, former cia chief david petry will talk about current global challenges to strategic leadership, washington university is the host. it will be live at 6 pm eastern on c-span2. a live look at the lobby of trump tower in new york as we continue to look in on it and probably for one of the last times today. not much news coming out of the meeting with the president-elect is having with respective cabinet members today. we did learn that he will spend the holidays at his more lago resort in florida before another victory tour event coming up in orlando and we will have that live for you tonight on c-span, it starts at seven eastern. we will lock the lobby here for just a little bit. >>.

[inaudible conversation]

>>. [inaudible conversation]

>> you can watch this live feed from the lobby of trump tower all day on our website, go to c-span.org. follow the transition of government on c-span as president-elect donald trump

selects his cabinet and republicans and democrats prepare for the next congress, we will take you to key events as they happen without interruption. watch live on c-span, watch on-demand that c-span.org or listen on our free c-span radio app. >> every weekend, book tv brings you 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors. here are some of our programs this weekend. saturday at 10 pm eastern on cato institute one. georgetown university professor jason brennan looks at the fate failures of the democratic political system to providethe best outcome and calls for a change in how government is run in his book against democracy. he's interviewed by david bowes, vice president the cato institute . >> to get to these democracy fairness issues, why do people regret that and why they want that is because they think it won't work very well. they think it will lead to bad outcomes and they're probably right. once you say that, i care about fairness, i care about bad outcomes then you're on my side and you say well, how are you going to wait fairness versus quality of

the outcome? >> at 1 pm eastern, the before columbus foundation presents the 37th annual book awards which recognizes outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of america's diverse literary community. the awards were presented at the sf jazz center in san francisco. at 5 pm eastern, jonathan zimmerman, professor of history of education at the university of pennsylvania argues that free speech is under threat on college campuses across the country in his book campus politics, what everyone needs to know. >> the problem is the second kind of people that doesn't taboo words and discussion but taboos ideas. right? 40 percent of opposed affirmative action, we are hearing from them. that means there are is a serious problem. >> go to booktv.org for the complete weekend schedule. >> this weekend on american history tv on c-span three.

providence college history professor patrick greene and author of the book the land shall be deluged in blood examines the life of matt turner, the slave rebellion he led in 1831 and the confusion and uncertainty in the revolt aftermath. >> the clash between the slaves and the free blacks and bodied the dramatic differences that existed in the black community including artists decided to support the revolt while others elected to support the whites. >> at eight on lectures in history, university of maryland katerina king on the evolution of advertising and marketing as a profession in the early 20th century and how consumer experiences changed during this time. >> see auto as a means of transportation, from point a to point b, you can sell a car teach. >> before nine, historian todd casino discusses the post-world war ii to career

of pulitzer prize winning editorial cartoonist bill mauldin who was a cartoonist at war with u.s. army stars and stripes magazine. >> mauldin had avoided ideological outbursts but he never allowed partisan politics into his art. back home however, he jumped into the political fray with both feet. >> sunday at 6 pm on american artifacts. >> one of my favorite documents in the galley is a draft version of what became the bill of rights. we usually refer to this as the senate markup. the senate took 17 minutes passed by the house and change them into 12 amendments that asked for a conference committee, it was 12 amendments sent to the state prosecution and intent of those 12 were ratified by the state. >> coach ureters christine blackberry and jennifer johnson take a tour of the national archives exhibit of the 225th anniversary of the ratification of the bill of rights on december 15, 1791.

for a complete american history tv schedule, go to c-span.org. >> and now to a discussion on changes expected to the federal health care law under the 45th congress and president-elect donald trump. from earlier today, this comes from the american enterprise institute in washington. >>. [inaudible conversation] >> good morning everyone. good morning. welcome to the american enterprise institute for today's discussion about the future of healthcare reform. i'm joe and toes, i'm the healthcare policy at aei and i'm delighted to be inside.

contrary to what some have claimed over the last year or two, there's no shortage of proposals to replace the affordable care act. from republicans of all stripes, members of congress including speaker paul ryan to produce something called a better way which you are basically familiar with . doctor tom christman and powering patients first act and other proposals that are going over at least the last six years or so from members of the senate and members of the house. think tanks havealso gotten into the act . including aei's project that we produced in collaboration with a total of 10 of our colleagues from aie and other

think tanks so they there is no lack of ideas and the only question now is that republicans are in charge is there a willingness to actually reform? the proposals that we've seen in the past promote several common themes. particularly they've retained subsidies from people insurance and insurance on the individual market but they changed the way those subsidies are designed. they illuminate the mandate to purchase insurance but create new incentives for people to buy coverage. they create high risk rules and individualized individual markets, they transfer regulatory authority for the insurance market back to the states. each of these proposals that we've seen in the past would of course repeal the affordable care act but put in its place a policy that

promotes a more market oriented, member driven view of american healthcare. but the specifics matter, obviously an agreement on the philosophy is not guaranteed that there will be agreements among republicans on the hill or people in general about the individual visions that would make up a replacement bill. our first panel will focus on what can or should be in the replaced bill. beyond thegeneral principles, what is needed for a replaced bill to ensure access for appropriate and ideally affordable coverage for everyone ? that's not necessarily a guarantee that anybody must or will have coverage but they have to have the opportunity to get coverage,

ideally as i say it should be affordable. what isneeded on the way to , on the way to this replacement that would ensure the individual insurance market will continue to operate while other changes are being implemented and in particular, now that they are in charge, do republicans support the idea over the past six years and are they able to put theirreelections on the line for it ? the second panel will discuss the challenges of an acting such legislation in the face of a narrow senate majority, top legislative rules and a tight timeline but we will start first with the first panel and let me briefly introduce everyone here in the order that they will speak. first up is scott harrington who's the alan bmiller professor in healthcare management and insurance risk management . at the ward school at the university of pennsylvania. next up is bob reischauer who

is a distinguished institute fellow and president emeritus of the institute and among many other things is a former speaker director and finally tom miller, my colleague at aie will wrap up the panel and we will have discussion, maybe arguments among ourselves with the audience. so with that, we will take it apart. >> good morning everyone. i'm going to focus my remarks on the individual market and what a replacement would be to consider in order to make that market perform reasonably well. i'm not going to talk about timing or any repeal or replacement.i'm not going to talk about logistics, i don't have anything to say about medicaid. i'm necessarily going to have to get into the weeds. one of the first things that goes on with the debate it's

at a high and simplistic level but now that we are at the point of talking about changing the law, it's necessarily going to have to get very specific. let me just remind you what the affordable care act did with regard to individual and small group health insurance markets. it provided guaranteed ratings without regard to health status, a big deal. it did restrict rating based on age within a 3 to 1 age band so older people can always say three times as much as younger people. that was designed to make college more affordable for all the people at a cost of having some young people face higher premiums. the aca provided minimum essential benefits, minimum coverage tears of coverage tear that had to exist in all the states. it's subsidy scheme was fairly complex, based on income and there's also a scheme to subsidize cost-sharing in addition to premiums and of course there's the individual mandate which has what i think is fair to characterize as modest penalties for noncompliance and there are

open enrollment periods and special enrollment periods where people can signup for coverage . now the problems that have arisen, generally the markets do not appear to be seeing sustainability, at least in this time in many states. coverage by the uninsured has been quite a bit lower than had been predicted area the risk foals are sicker and older than had been predicted. there is anecdotal evidence that people have waived coverage and sign up during special enrollment periods when they need care and what gets the headlines, there have been large premium increases , in fact dramatically large premium increases in some states and it's sitting back in the big picture and a lot of states, premiums are high and cost-sharing, deductibles and co-sharing are also very high so a relatively modest means can look at the coverage and essay this doesn't cover much

but then it's very expensive. the lowest income participants are really subsidized both in terms of reduced deductibles, reduced cost-sharing and reduce premiums of people that are much above 200-5000 percent of poverty and especially 400 percent of poverty has really gotten hit in recent years. the other thing that's been going on is that insurance subsidies overall have lost a lot of money in the individual market. it varies across companies but overall the losses are big and many companies have decided to pull out of the exchanges in these states area let me touch on some key features of what a replacement might look like and i would commend the reports that joe mentioned, especially the aie. it's really wonderful in terms of laying out the groundwork of some of the pros and cons of proposals. one thing that we would expect is the return of substantial regulatory

authority to the states regarding minimum benefits and coverage design issues as well as any pricing regulations. second key component would be to change the form from an income premium based subsidy under the affordable care act to some form of refundable tax credit while slightly with the tax credit increasing with age to make sure it's more affordable for older people. a really key part of the proposal would be what do you do about the problem of pre-existing conditions? under that proposal, basically provide guarantees for people that are continuously insured. if a person had insurance, they would be able to quit insurers, move from the employer market to the individual market and not pay premiums that reflect their health status. they would have few issues that they were continuously assured. there would be an initial enrollment period where previously uninsured people can sign up in premiums that had guaranteed issues.

the people waited, if they didn't sign up for continued coverage they would lose the protections against being underwritten for pre-existing conditions. people that fell through the gap ended up with a coverage, the proposal would establish state high risk pools with a certain amount of federal funding so people could get some coverage, albeit at a higher price. very important issues here that really matter. one is the amount and design of the tax credit. my opinion is a new need to increase with age. older people don't get a bigger tax credit, i fear the coverage could be unaffordable and you get extreme adverse selections among older people. another thorny issue is should the tax credits be tied to income? it's not clear how a refundable tax credit system that isn't related to income can provide as much support for lower income people as

for the affordable care act but if you start relating the tax credit income that lower income people get a bigger credit, it does complicate the system and economists worry about the impact on supply and work effort and other issue is whether tax credits should their very by region because healthcare costs and insurance costs vary by region. if you have a uniform tax credit nationwide, that may not be ideal but if you cater to those tax credits you are opening up a can of worms in terms of complexity . just a quick point, the better way proposal would not allow a person to give up their employer coverage and get a tax credit and buy in the individual market while remaining employed in the group so the tax credit wouldn't be affordable. if you are in a group plan, your offered in a group plan and you stay in the plan. it's a proposal that would allow that taxcredit . in theory, having the tax

credit would be affordable between people choosing between coverage from the individual market could be a good thing area in practice, i think it creates a lot of uncertainty and i also have a great resistance to doing anything to undermine the employer-sponsored market which ensures 160 million people and in my opinion is able walk against having insure congress under further unknown scenarios to move toward expanding government insurance through broader sections of the population. the high risk pools will be key. what you want to have in the high risk pool is enough of a panel so people are encouraged to sign up and not go into the high risk pool but you also have to provide protection for people who fall between the cracks. it's clear to me that significant federal funding will be required to make this work. i would also like to see discussion on providing state's electability so maybe any federal funding for higher risk buyers of insurance would go into a pool, maybe there could be a single pool that would allow

federal funding to be used to subsidize more directly without having the prices of other people have to go up to pay the cost. this whole issue of what we call adverse selection and guaranteed issue. we are in this world, we moved to this world while the insurance, you don't have to worry about paying a higher premium is of a pre-existing condition. you've got an initial sign up. where you can take advantage of those protections. will those markets perform well? will there be a disproportionate number of people that are in poor health that will sign up in that initial enrollment period? will people that lose coverage at work due to losing their employment, will they be disproportionately less healthy and as a result drive up premiums in the guaranteed issue market this is an open question.

a lot of people are going to say already that you have to have an individual mandate to make these type of markets work . but the individual mandate in the affordable care act is really pretty weak so if you design the incentives besides having an upfront mandate, if you have enough incentives for people to buy if they get hit later with some penalties, we may have achieved some form of stability in this guaranteed issue market. there might be conceivably the issue associated with that. and actually related to that is, i think we have to worry about instability as we make changes . there could be significant instability during the repeal and replace debate but i'm thinking i had to let's say if we have a replacement plan, will markets be stable? will this guaranteed issue market be stable? my training in insurance and economics in my conversations with actuaries lead me to believe that companies are very nervous about having a whole new set of rules on only one underwriting pool and they worry about the risk will look like. i think it would be desirable

to be very careful consideration to some form of stability mechanism for some number of years to ensure or help ensure a stable market as we moved to the new world. this gets politically very touchy because the stability mechanisms can be things like reinsurance and risk corridors which republicans to some extent viewed as an act,. clearly i believe the risk corridors under the affordable care act which sensibly was going to protect companies against adverse claim costs from a worse than average risk pool, they encouraged overly aggressive pricing and there were issues with it but i will leave it simply to say that some stability mechanisms really would be desirable to make this thing work. i don't know where to go with this except politics coverage design quandary. economic and practitioners, most people think that basic coverage should include catastrophe protection.

that no matter what coverage people are buying, it should cover the very high end. there should be nolimits, no lifetime limits, no annual limits . the problem is that many buyers are likely to prefer coverage if they have to have a trade-off between getting coverage for the high cost stuff which likely won't happen and things that are more likely that may involve modest expenditures, five, 10, $15,000 a year. a lot of people with modest means are going to want to get something covered at the lower end. i'm not talking about $100 deductibles but that five, seven, $10,000 that can be damaging to people of modest needs and i worry that our emphasis on catastrophe coverage can give rise to a situation where people of modest means will either see

a policy with a high deductible which protects them against very rare events but they don't view it as being attractive because it doesn't help them pay the bills and meet their obligations every month. on the other hand they might get richer coverage which does provide more coverage for more modest expenses but the premiums will be so high that they basically view it as not attractive. both of those economics take-up and can make voters unhappy. i don't have an answer to this question but i think that sometimes we underestimate the desire and need for people of politically modest needs to have insurance that pays for that shock that they really can't budget for. health savings accounts if they are promoted clearly can help. i think we can think more about if there is a way of providing some form of subsidy, maybe subsidize catastrophe coverage so that people of modest means would be able to use more of the dollars on things that might matter to them. >> thank you very much. >> thank you, it's a pleasure to be here. i'm glad they're building out

some aspects of this and i'm going to make a few rather simple points and the first of those is that if the last six years has taught us anything, it's that if we want major health reform to be politically sustainable, it's going to have to have a bipartisan support and that's the political reality and a procedural reality, it's a political reality because of how the health sector constitutes our economy involves the service to the vast majority of the population who think it's absolutely essential and is represented by powerful interest groups that employ millions of workers and not all of the folks involved are republicans or democrats. it's a procedural imperative because a partial appeal of the aca which is what a republicans are proposing

using the budget reconciliation process, that's not the case for a comprehensive bill that would replace the health care act because reconciliation process is limited to legislation that affects mandatory spending. so a replacement is going to have to 60 votes in the senate and that's almost assuredly going to involve attracting some seeds and more democratic vote. the second point i would make is the goals that have been articulated by the incoming administration and by many republican repeal advocates are, the refresher memories these promises included but broadening the number of full with insurance, making health care more affordable for

americans, improving the quality of care, reducing government health spending and providing more flexibility and choice and fewer regulations for state providers and participants. there's going to have to be some trade-offs here. all of these can't be achieved. if all we're comparing this to is what exists today under the affordable care act as opposed to what existed pre-2010. third, grasping and interpreting a replacement for the affordable care act is going to take a good deal of time. 30 years i think would bework speed for our legislative process . notwithstanding what joe said, there really is no consensusabout any specific agreed-upon plan among republicans . there were ideas, there are velocities but it's a rich

menu but that's easy to do. writing legislative language is much much harder and there are going to be complexities, there's going to be controversies as professor harrington pointed out. once the republican consent emerges, it's going to have to be modified with democratic support. then dbo is going to have to score and none of these philosophies, ideas, whatever have been scored the way cbo scores them and the results are going to be compared to what thecontinuation of the affordable care act would involve . that could send the policymakers back to the drawing board for shall we say a few adjustments. our legislative process is not known for its speed. several committees in each chamber are going to have to do their drafting.

they're going to have to be for votes in the house and senate, there's going to have to be recalled resolving of differences between the house and senate. once the senate is present to sign the bill, the executive agencies are going to need time to write necessary rules and regulations and notwithstanding the fact that we don't like regulations now , we won't start on january 20, we can't just throw the bill out there with no rules and regulations on how that actual legislative language will be interpreted and then you're going to need time for the various stakeholders, the insurers providers to prepare for whatever this system is. i would be very surprised if

individuals who are not covered by an employer provided health insurance plan will be able to enroll in whatever the new system is much before january 2020 but we are talking about taking a deep breath and going about this in a very deliberate kind of way and it's worth remembering that this isn't the only thing on the plate. we have tax reform, we have infrastructure, we have reforming and entitlement programs, increased military spending, reduction of spending, all in the budget and controversial issues that are going to be going on at the same time. the fourth point is that the affordable care marketplace is in shaky shape and they're going to need some shoring up. this includes when clinton

won the election or trump won the election, we're in a situation where reinforcement is needed to keep the exchanges going permanently or just in an interim period before a new system can be put in place. we need to ensure that health insurers are offering a sufficient variety of plans to the exchanges. we need to provide insurers maximum management around risk and to compensate them for the selection which hasn't really worked out as intended on the affordable care act and we also need to reduce the uncertainty among providers about what might come next. repeal without concurrent and acting replacements will create greater uncertainty and without some remedial assistance and intervention i think we change a component

of the affordable care act very shortly. if the decision is made to repeal the individual mandate immediately and that is not a component of the reconciliation bill that was vetoed by president obama in january 2016, or a decision was made to drop the cost-sharing suit that is currently on hold, the president could unravel it much faster. at this point, a substantial fraction of the voting public may not want to interact as a whole, they like many of the parks. the ones that they know about and they like the consequences from all the provisions that they are really familiar with. some of the parts they don't like might be necessary to ensure that the part they do like and the professor

explained one of these witches the unpopular individual mandate and the tax penalty, they will maintain adequate coverage and it would've killed it at the end of segment, it's going to be limited. advocates of replacement plans have proposed alternative mechanisms that might encourage congress to put additional rates on a voluntary basis by premium surcharges on those who don't maintain continuous insurance coveragebut we don't know whether these approaches will work . they could prove to be courageously complex and proved to be quite intrusive and we have to keep a record of every month that every person has insurance and insurance may be given to a family but the family isn't covered and they say oh, you

have to keep track of everybody. that part you don't like, inclusiveness before, this is in a different place.six point and final point, while many of the republic may not like certain aspects of the affordable care act, that doesn't necessarily mean they are going to be enthusiastic about some of the alternative approaches that have been put forward . nor does it mean these approaches will be devoid as i mentioned before of complexity or implementation just as all the complexities of the affordable care act ran into trouble. let me just illustrate this by saying a few words about two components that have been put forward by advocates of replacement acts. first, opponents of the affordable care act and the

cadillac tax suggest that in its stead, an upper limit be proposed in the tax deductibility of employer aid premiums . the deductibility which would be passed through the workers is effective at incentivizing employers who after all make the decisions on what kind of insurance the workers are given a choice of. would that be as effective at restraining cost and it's only employer initially, not that the employer wouldn't pass it down in the invisible way. the employer is making the decision with the insurance companies on the various employees, it becomes a different mechanism for exerting pressure and with the design details of the tax deductibilityprove any more popular than the unpopular details of the cadillac tax ? they will still have to decide whether the various health status confirms

workers, the geography, the cost of healthcare in different areas, the riskiness of the occupations that workers are doing. then there are the myriad implementation decisions like how would employers allocate the proportion of the premium above the deductibility across their workforce . we now have different categories, different things in different categories, individual and family, individual family adult with child . they are generally very buy-in. how are the younger workers of the firm going to feel if their coverage is well below the but the average as a whole is above the cat? they don't want to be hit by that. second example is a refundable tax credit is associated with the average employer plan or replace the

premium subsidies that are provided to low income individuals purchasing through the affordable care act exchanges. even this credit, most would find the subsidy is probably about enough by a catastrophic policy and not much more. house how are house republicans going to respond to that? and this includes such things as trying to tolerate the tax benefit of the average employer plan and how one would handle the differences between the tax interim and the insurance unit would easily be as complicated as under the affordable care act so we're confirming the reality of the affordable care act. let me conclude by noting

that contrary to what one hears in political echo chambers in which we live , the public is not clamoring to have the affordable care act written up by the roots and replaced with something new and radically different. the latest kaiser family foundation poll found 26 percent of the country wants to repeal the entire law. 17 percent would like to scale it back but on the other hand, 30 percent want to expand the law and 19 percent want to leave it where it is.>> we are a divided nation that says as we move forward we should try to come together and coming together might mean revising, reforming the reform as opposed to trying to create such an absolutely new and different to pass a label on it, obamacare. >> this afternoon, remarks from retired army general

david petraeus on global challenges and strategic leadership. he served as the afghanistan war commander and cia director during the obama administration. he has comments lot from george washington university, 6 pm eastern here on c-span2. president-elect donald trump told another victory rally in florida after winning that state and electoral votes by over 120,000 votes. his rally with supporters in orlandolater today , 7 pm eastern on c-span. tomorrow a memorial service for the late afternoon and us senator john glenn who died last week at the age of 95. mister glenn was the first american to orbit the earth and later in life can the oldest person to travel to space. he represented ohio in the u.s. senate from 1974 to 1997. tomorrow's memorial service takes place at ohio state

university and the live coverage gets underway 2 pm eastern on c-span. >> this weekend, c-span city tour along with narcotic medications cable partners will explore the literary life and history of scottsdale arizona . nicknamed west's most western town on book tv on c-span2, hear about life on route 66, known as america's mother road, 66 was one of the original us highways between illinois and southern california. in his book the 66 kids, raised on the mother road, author bob most bell route recalls his life in kingman arizona which is located on route 66 and the many things he observed while helping his father run a gas station. >> about 10 years ago i got a call from a writer and he said i read about your article in arizona highway. >>

a. he had just been assigned to a church when the civil war broke out in lincoln called for volunteers. he wanted to get into it so he went back to his hometown in new york. it was a little tiny town and he started recruiting and raising his own company of soldiers, and

i think he recruited 33 of his own cousins and his bible study class, and he even recruited the town band. >> we will also visit the winter home of frank lloyd white. >> it was how to live in the desert southwest. it was something that he used as a laboratory. he was working to create a new kind of architecture for america. >> the cspan cities tour at noon eastern on book tv. sunday afternoon at 2:00 p.m., on american history tv on c-span three, working with with our cable affiliates and visiting cities across the country. >> earlier today president obama's held his final news conference of the year. it's 90 minutes. >> this is the most wonderful press conference of the year

i've got a list of who's been naughty and nice to call on but let me take a couple quick points and then i'll answer your question. typically i use this to review how far we've come over the course of the year. today, understandably, i will talk a little bit about how far we've come over the past eight years. as i was preparing to take office, the unemployment rate was now the lowest a decade. we've seen the longest job growth on record

many americans signed up to get coverage and more are signing up by the day. we have cut our dependence on foreign oil by more than half, doubled our renewable energy and enacted the most sweeping reform since fdr to prevent the conference on wall street from punishing us again. none of them stifled growth as critics projected but the stock market has nearly tripled. our businesses have added more than 15 million new jobs and the economy is more durable than it was in the days when we relied on oil from unstable nations and banks and took risky bets with your money. add it all up and the poverty rate fell last year at the fastest rate in almost 50 years while the median household income grew at the fastest year on record. income gains were larger for

households at the bottom and the middle than for those at the top. we have done all of this while cutting deficits by two thirds and protecting vital investments that grow the middle class. in foreign policy, when i came to office, we were in the midst of two wars. now, nearly 180,000 troops are down to 15000. in latin, rather than being at large has been taken off the battlefield along with thousands of other terrorists. none have been able to attack our homeland, we have made sure they cannot maintain maintain a nuclear weapon without going to war with iran. we opened up a new chapter with

the people of cuba and we brought nearly 200 nations together around a climate agreement that could very well save this planet for our kids. and, and, almost every country on earth sees america as stronger and more respected today than they did eight years ago. in other words, by so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started. it's a situation i'm proud to leave for my successor, and give thanks to the american people, for the hard work you have put in and the sacrifices you have made for your families in your communities, the businesses that you have started or invested in, and the way you looked out for one another. i could not be prouder to be your president. of course, to tout this product progress does not mean we are not mindful of how much more there is to do. in the season in particular, we are reminded there are people who are still hungry, people who are still homeless, people who

still have trouble paying the bills or finding work after being laid off. there are communities that are still mourning those who have been stolen from us from senseless gun violence and parents who are still wondering how to protect their kids. after i leave office, i intend to continue to work with organizations and citizens doing good across the country on these and other pressing issues to build on the progress that we have made. around the world as well, there are hotspots where disputes have been intractable conflicts that flared up and people, innocent people, are suffering as a result. nowhere is this more terribly true than in the city of aleppo. for years, we have worked to stop the civil war in syria and alleviate human suffering. it has been one of the hardest issues that i have faced as president. the world, as we speak, is united in four at the savage

assault by the syrian regime and its russian and iranian allies on the city of aleppo. we have seen a deliberate strategy of surrounding, besieging and starving innocent civilians. we have seen relentless targeting of humanitarian workers and medical personnel, entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble and dust. there are continuing reports of civilians being executed, and these are all horrific violations of international law. responsibility for this brutality lies in one place alone, with the asad regime and its allies, russia and iran. this blood in these atrocities are on their hands. we all know what needs to happen there needs to be an impartial international observer force in aleppo that can help coordinate an orderly evacuation through safe corridors. there has to be full access for humanitarian aid, even as the

u.s. continues to be the largest donor of humanitarian aid to the syrian people, and beyond that there needs to be a broader cease-fire that can serve as the basis of a political, rather than military solution. that's what the u.s. will continue to push for, both with our partners and through multilateral institutions like the un. regretfully, but unsurprisingly, russia has repeatedly blocked the security council from taking action on these issues, so, so we will keep pressing the security council to help improve the delivery of humanitarian aid to those in such aspirate need and to ensure accountability, including continuing to monitor any potential use of chemical weapons in syria. we will work in the un general assembly as well, both on accountability and to advance a political settlement. it should be clear that although you may achieve a tactical victory, over the long-term, the asad regime cannot slaughter its

way to legitimacy. that's why we will continue to press for a transition to a more representative government and that's why the world must not avert our eyes to the terrible things that are unfolding. the syrian regime and the russian and syrian allies are trying to obfuscate the truth. the world should not be fooled and the world will not forget. so, even in the a season where the incredible blessings that we know as americans are all around us, even as as we enjoy family and friends and are reminded of how lucky we are, we should also be reminded that to be an american involves bearing ordinance and meeting obligations to others. american values, and american ideals are what will lead the way. it will be a safer and more

prosperous for the 17th, both here and abroad. by the way, few embody those values and ideals than our men and women in uniform and their families. i want to close by wishing all of them a very merry christmas and a happy new year. with that, i will take some questions and i will start with josh letterman of ap. >> thank you mr. president. there's a thought that you are letting vladimir putin get away with interfering with the election. are you prepared to call out vladimir putin by name for ordering this hacking and you agree with hillary clinton now says that the hacking was actually partially responsible for her loss? is your administration open to quarreling with trump and his team on this issue tarnishing the smooth power of transfer of

power that you have promised. >> first of all with regard to the transition, i think they would be the first to acknowledge that we have done everything we can to make sure they are successful as i promised, and that will continue it has just been a few days since i last talked to the president elect about a whole range transition issues. that cooperation will continue. there hasn't been a lot of squabbling. what we have simply said is the facts which are that based on uniform intelligence assessment, the russians were responsible for hacking the dnc, and that as a consequence, it is important for us to review all elements of that and make sure that we are preventing that kind of interference through cyber

attacks in the future. that should be a bipartisan issue. that shouldn't be a partisan issue. my hope is the president-elect is going to similarly be concerned with making sure that we don't have potential foreign influence in our election process. i don't think any american wants that. that shouldn't be a source of an argument. i think that part of the challenge is that it gets caught up in the carryover from election season, and i think it is very important for us to distinguish between the politics of the election and the need for us as a country, both from a national security perspective, but also in terms of the integrity of our election system and our democracy to make sure that we don't create a political

football here. now, with respect to how this thing unfolded last year, let's let's just go through the facts quickly. at the beginning of the summer we were alerted to the possibility that the dnc has been hacked. i immediately order law enforcement, as well as our intelligent teams, to find out everything about it, investigated thoroughly, to brief the potential victims of this hacking, to brief, on a bipartisan basis, the leaders of both the house and the senate and the relevant intelligence committees, and once we had clarity and certainty around what had happened, we publicly announced that, in fact, russia had hacked into the dnc.

at that time, we did not attribute motives or any interpretations of why they had done so. we didn't discuss what the effects of it might be. we simply let people know, the public know, just has we had that members of congress know that this had happened. as a consequence, all of you wrote a lot of stories about both what had happened and you interpreted why that might have happened and what effect it was going to have on the election outcomes. we did not. the reason we did not was because in this hyper- partisan atmosphere, at a time when my primary concern was making sure that the integrity of the election process was not in any

way damaged, at a time when anything that was said by me or anybody in the white house would immediately be seen through a person lends, i wanted to make sure that everyone understood we were playing this thing straight. we were trying to advantage one side or another, but what we were trying to do was let people know this had taken place and so if you started seeing effects on the election, if you were trying to measure why this was happening and how you should consume information that was being leaked, that you might want to take this into account. that's exactly how we should have handled it. imagine if we had done the opposite. it would become immediately just one more political scrum. part of the goal here was to make sure that we did not do the work of the leakers for them by

raising more more questions about the integrity of the election right before the election was taking place, at a time, by the way, when the president-elect was raising questions about the integrity of the election. and, finally, i think it's worth pointing out that the information was already out there. it was in the hands of wikileaks that was going to come out no matter what. what i was concerned about in particular was making sure that wasn't compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting in effect the election process itself and so, in early september when i saw president putin in china, i felt the most effective way to ensure that didn't happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out or there would be serious consequences if he didn't.

in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process, but the week through wikileaks had already occurred. when i look back in terms of how we handle that, i think we handled it the way we should have handled it. we allow that enforcement and the intelligence community to do its job without political influence. we briefed all relevant parties involved in terms of what was taking place. when we had a consensus around what had happened, we announced it, not to the white house, not through me but rather through the intelligence communities that have actually carried out these investigations. then we allowed you and the american public to make an assessment as to how to way that going into the election. the truth is, there was nobody here who didn't have some sense

of what kind of effect it might have. i am finding a little curious that everyone is suddenly acting surprised that this looked like it was disadvantaging hillary clinton because you wrote about it every day. every single week about every little juicy tidbit of political gossip. including john podesta's risotto recipe. this was an obsession that dominated the news coverage. so, i do do think it's worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential election of such importance, of such moment with so many big issues at stake in such a contrast between the candidates came to be dominated

by a bunch of these leaks. what is it about our political system that made us vulnerable to these kinds of potential manipulation, which i've said publicly before, were not particularly sophisticated. this was not some elaborate complicated espionage scheme. they hacked into some democratic party e-mails that contain pretty routine stuff. some of it embarrassing or uncomfortable because i suspect we wouldn't want something appearing on the front page of a newspaper or a telecast even if there wasn't something particularly illegal. and then they just took off, and that concerns me and it should

concern all of us, but the truth of the matter is everybody had the information. it was out there, and we handled it the way we should have. now, moving forward, i think there are a couple issues this raises. number one is the constant challenge that we are going to have with cyber security. throughout our county and throughout our society. we are a digitalized culture and there is hacking going on every single day. there is not a company or a major organization, there's not a financial institution or branch of our government where somebody is not going to be fishing for something or trying to penetrate or put in a virus or malware and this is why, for the past eight years, i have been obsessed with how to we continually upgrade our cyber security systems.

this particular concern around russian hacking is part of a broader set of concerns about how to deal with cyber issues being used in ways that can affect our infrastructure and the stability of our financial systems, and affect the integrity of our institutions, like our election process. i just received, a couple weeks back, back, it wasn't widely reporting on, a report from our cyber security commission that outlines a whole range of strategies to do a better job on this. it's difficult because it's not all housed, the target of cyber attacks is not one entity, but

it's widely dispersed and a lot of it is private, like the d&c. it's not a a branch of government. we can't tell people what to do but what we can do is inform them and give them best practices. what we can also do is, a bilateral bilateral basis, one other countries against these kind of attacks. we've done that in the past. just as i've told russia to stop it and indicated there will be consequences when they do it, the chinese have, in the past, engaged in cyber attacks directed at our company to steal trade secrets and proprietary technology. i had to have the same conversation with president she and what we have seen is some evidence that they have produced, but not completely eliminated these activities, partly because they can use cutouts, one of the problems with the internet and cyber

issues is there is not always a return address. by the time you catch up to it, attributing what happened to a particular government can be difficult, not always provable in court even though intelligence communities can make an assessment. what we have also tried to do is to start creating some international norms about this to prevent some sort of cyber arms race because we obviously have offense of capabilities as well as defensive capabilities. my approach is not a situation which everybody is worse off because folks are constantly attacking each other back and forth, but putting some guardrails around the behavior with nationstates, including our avid theories so they understand that whatever they do to us, we can potentially do to them.

we do have some special challenges because often times our academy until economy is more digitalized and vulnerable, partly because we are wealthier nation and were more wired than some of these other countries and we have a more open society and engage in less control and censorship over what happens over the internet. that is also part of what makes us special. last point, the reason i'm going on here is because i know you have a lot of questions about this. with respect to response, my principal goal leading up to the election was making sure that the election itself went off without a hitch, that was not tarnished and that it did not feed any sense in the public that somehow tempering had taken

place with the actual process and we accomplished that. that does not mean that we are not going to respond, it simply meant we had a set of priorities leading up to the election that were of the upmost importance. our goal continues to be to send a clear message to russia and others not to do this to us because we can do stuff to you. it is also important for us to do that in a thoughtful, methodical way. some of it we do publicly, some of it we will do in a way that they know, but not everybody will. i know there have been folks out there who suggest somehow that if we went out there and made big announcements and thumped our chest about a bunch of stuff that somehow that would

potentially speak the russians, keep in mind we already have enormous numbers of sanctions against russia. the relationship between us and russia has deteriorated, sadly, significantly over the past several years. how we approach an appropriate response that imprint engine increases cost for them for behavior like this in the future but does not create problems for us is something that is worth taking the time to think through and figure out. that's exactly what we have done so, at a point time where we have taken certain actions that we can divulge publicly we will do so. there are times where the message will be directly received by the russians and not publicized. i should point out, by the way, part of why the russians have

been effective on this is because they don't go around announcing what they are doing. it's not like vladimir putin is going around the world publicly saying look what we did, wasn't that clever, he denies it. so, the idea that somehow public shaming is going to be effective i think doesn't read the thought process in russia very well. >> is this clinton lose because of the hacking? >> i'm going to let all the political pundits in this town have a long discussion about what happened in the election. it was a fascinating election. i'm sure there will be a lot of books written about it. i have said what i think is important for the democratic party going forward, rather than

try to parse every aspect of the election, i've said before i couldn't be more proud of secretary clinton, her outstanding service, i think she has worked tirelessly on behalf of the american people and i don't think she was treated fairly during the election. i think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling, but, having said that what i have the most focused on, appropriate for the fact that i'm not going to be a politician in about 32 days, 31, 34. [laughter] what i said is maybe i can give some advice to the democratic party. the thing we have to spend the most time on because it's the thing we have the most control over is how do we make sure that

we are showing up in places where democratic policies are needed, where where they are helping and where they are making a difference, but where people feel as if they are not being heard. : just because a strong base in chicago but because i was driving around downstate illinois, and go into french fries and vfw halls and talking to farmers. i didn't win every one of their

votes but they got a sense of what i was talking about, what i cared about, that, that i was for working people, that i was for the middle class, that the reason i was interested in strengthening unions and raising the minimum wage and rebuilding our infrastructure and making sure that parents had decent childcare and family was because my own families history wasn't that different from theirs, even if i looked a little bit different. same thing in iowa. so the question is how do we revealed that party as a whole so that there is not a county in any state, i don't care how red, where we don't have a presence and we're not making the argument because i think we hae a better argument. that requires a lot of work. it's been something i've been able to do successfully in my own campaigns. it is not something i've been

able to transfer to candidates in midterms, and sort of build a sustaining organization around. that's something i would've liked to have done more of, it's kind of hard to do when you're also dealing with a whole bunch of issues here in the white house. that doesn't mean though that it can't be done, and i think it would be a lot, talented folks out there, a lot of progressives who share my values were going to be leading the charge in the years to come. michelle? >> thank you. we heard hillary talk about how she's been, the fbi director recent announcement made a difference in the outcome of the election. we also just heard in an op-ed for campaign surrogate talk about something being different judgment deeply broken in the fbi, talking that the

investigation early on was lackadaisical. what do you think about those comments cracks do you think there's any truth to them? do you think there is a danger there that they are calling into question the integrity of the institution in a similar way that donald trump's team has done? and the second part to that is that donald trump's team repeatedly, giving the implication that the investigation of the russian hack as well as retaliation might not be such a priority once he's in office. so what do you think the risk is there? are you going to talk to him directly about some of those comments he made? >> well, on the latter point, as i've said before, the transition from election season to govern its season is not always smooth. it's bumpy. there still feelings that are

raw out there. there are people who are still thinking about how things unfolded, and i get all that, but when donald trump takes the oath of office and is sworn in as the 45th president of the traneight, then he's got a a different set of responsibilities and considerations. and i said this before. i think there is a sobering process when you walk into the oval office. i have shared previously private conversations i've had with the president-elect. i will say that they have been cordial, and in some cases have involved me making some pretty specific suggestions about how to ensure that, regardless of obvious disagreements about

policy, maybe i can transmit some thoughts about maintaining the effectiveness, integrity, cohesion of the office of various democratic institutions. and he's been, has listened. i can't say that he will end up implementing, but the conversations themselves have been cordial as opposed to defective in any way. and i will always make myself available to him just as previous presidents have made themselves available to me as issues come up. with respect to the fbi, i will tell you, i've had a chance a chance to know a lot of fbi agents. i know director comey. may take -- they take the job seriously. they work really hard.

they help keep us safe, and save a lot of lives. and it is always a challenge for law enforcement when there's an intersection between the work that they are doing and the political system. it's one of the difficulties of democracy generally. we have a system where we want our law enforcement investigators and our prosecutors to be free from politics, to be attentive to play it straight, but sometimes that involves investigations that touch on politics, and particularly in this hyper partisan environment that we have been in, everything is suspect. everything you do one way or the other. one thing that i have done is to

be pretty scrupulous about not wading into investigation decisions for prosecution decisions or decisions not to prosecute. i have tried to be really strict in my own behavior about preserving the independence of law enforcement, free from my own judgments and political assessment in some cases. i don't know why it would stop now. mike of bloomberg. >> thank you, mr. president. on aleppo, your views and what happens there there, the responsibility to the russian government, iranian government? do you have -- the assad regime.

but did you as president of the united states, leader of the free world feel any personal moral responsibility now at the end of your presidency for the carnage we are all watching in aleppo which i'm sure disturbs you? secondly, also on aleppo, you have you've been made clear you a practical disagreements, and president-elect trump passed throughout his campaign and he said again last night that he wants to create safe zones in scenery. do you feel like in this transition you need to help him towards intimating that? or was that not something -- [inaudible] >> mike, i always feel responsible. i've felt responsible when kids were being shot by snipers. i felt responsible when millions

of people have been displaced. i feel responsible for murder and slaughter that's taken place in south sudan that's not being reported on, partly because there's not as much social media being generated from there. there are places around the world were horrible things are happening, and because of my office, because i'm president of united states, i feel responsible. i asked myself every single day, is there something i could do that would save lives and make a difference, and spare some child who doesn't deserve to suffer? so that's a starting point. there's not a moment during the course of his presidency where i haven't felt some responsibility. that's true, by the way, for our

own country. when i came into office and people were losing their jobs and losing their homes and losing their pensions, i felt responsible. and i would go home at night and i would ask myself, was there something better that i could do or smarter that i could be that would make a difference in their lives, that would relieve their suffering and relieve their hardship? so with respect to syria, what i've consistently done is taken the best course that i can to try to end the civil war while having also to take into account the long-term national security interest of the united states. and throughout this process, based on hours of meetings, if

you tallied it up, days or weeks of meetings, when we went through every option in painful detail with maps and we had our military and we had our aid agencies, and we had our diplomatic teams, and sometimes we would bring in outsiders who were critics of hours. whenever we went through it, the challenge was that short of putting large numbers of u.s. troops on the ground, uninvited, without any international law mandate, without sufficient support from congress, at a time when we still have troops in afghanistan and we still had troops in iraq, and we just gone

through over a decade of war and spent trillions of dollars, and when the opposition on the ground was not cohesive enough to necessarily govern the country, and you had a military superpower in russia prepared to do whatever it took to keep its client state involved, and you had a regional military power in iran that saw their own vital strategic interests at stake and willing to send in as many other people or proxies to support the regime, that in that circumstance unless we were all in, and willing to take over assyria, we were going to have problems. and that everything else was tempting because we wanted to do something, and it sounded like the right thing to do, but it was going to be impossible to do

this on the cheap. and in that circumstance i have to make a decision as president of united states as to what is best -- i'm sorry. what's going on? somebody not feeling good? all right. while we have, we've got, we can get our doctors back there to help out. somebody want to go to my doctor's office and just have them -- [inaudible] >> all right. where was i? so we couldn't do it on the cheap. now, it may be -- [inaudible] >> can somebody help out,

please, and get doc jackson in here? [inaudible] somebody grabbing my doctor? [inaudible] of course. in the meantime, give them more room. the doctor will be there in a second.

[inaudible] do you guys know where the doctor's office is? just go through the palm doors. it's right, right next to the map room. there he is. there's doc jackson. all right. okay. the doctor is in the house. so, and i don't mean that, i mean, i mean mean that with all sincerity. i understand the impulse to want to do something, but ultimately what i've had to do is to think about what can we sustain, what is realistic. and my first priority has to be

what's the right thing to do for america? and it has been our view that the best thing to do has been to provide some support to the moderate opposition so that they could sustain themselves, and that we wouldn't see anti-assad regime sentiments just pouring into on this rock and al-qaeda or iso- -- out nostra, that we engage our international partners in order to put pressure on all the parties involved. and you try to resolve this through diplomatic and political means. i cannot claim that we have been successful. and so that's something that as is true with a lot of issues and

problems around the world, i have to go to bed with every night. but i continue to believe that it wasn't the right approach given what realistically we could get done. absent a decision, as i said, to go into much more significant ways. and that i would not have been sustainable or good for the american people, because we had a whole host of other obligations that we also had to meet, wars when already started and that were not yet finished. with respect to the issue of safe zones, it is i continued problem, i continue challenge with the safe zones is that if you're setting up those zones on syrian territory, then that

requires some force that is willing to maintain that territory in the absence of consent from the syrian government, and now the russians, or the iranians. so it may be that with aleppo tragic situation unfolding, that in the short term if we can get more of the tens of thousands who are still trapped there out, that so long as the worlds eyes are on them and they are feeling pressure, the regime and russia concludes that they're willing to find some arrangement perhaps incarnation with turkey whereby those people can be safe.

even that will probably be temporary, but at least it solves a short-term issue that's going to arise. unfortunately, we are not even there yet because right now we have russians and assad clinic that basically all the innocent civilians who were trapped in aleppo are outcome when international organizations, humanitarian organizations to know who are on the ground have said unequivocally that are still tens of thousands who are trapped and prepared to leave, under pretty much any conditions. so right now our biggest priority is to continue to put pressure wherever we can to try to get them out. okay? i can't have too much -- [inaudible] >> sole responsibility -- or help president trump? >> i will help president trump, president-elect trump with any

advice, counsel, information that we can provide so that he, once he is sworn in, can make a decision. between now and then, these are decisions i have to make based on the consultations that i have with our military and the people who have been working this every single day. peter alexander. >> mr. president, thank you very much. can you give -- [inaudible] i show the public this was for all a free and fair election? specific on russia do you feel an obligation out as a been insisting that this isn't the case to show the proof as it were, put your money where your mouth is and declassified some of the intelligence, some of the evidence? more broadly as a relates to donald trump on this very topic, are you concerned about his relationship with a vladimir putin, especially given some of the cabinet picks including rex tillerson who hosted putin with champagne over oil deals?

>> i may be getting old because this multipart questions i just -- i start losing track. [laughter] i can assure the public that there was not the kind of tampering with the voting process that was their concern, and will continue to be a concern going forward. that the votes that were cast were counted. they recounted appropriately. we have not seen evidence of machines being tampered with. so that assurance i can provide. that doesn't mean that we find every single, you know, potential probe of every single

voting machine all across the country. but we paid a lot of attention to it. we worked with state officials, et cetera, and we feel confident that that didn't occur and that the votes were cast and they were counted. and so that's on that point. what was the second one? >> declassification. >> look, we will provide evidence that we can safely provide, that does not compromise sources and methods. but i'll be honest with you, when you were talking about cybersecurity, a lot of it is classified and we are not going to provide it because the way we catch folks is by knowing certain things about them that

they may not want us to know, and if we're going to monitor this effectively going forward, we don't want them to know that we know. so this is one of those situations where, unless the american people genuinely think that the professionals in the cia, the fbi, our entire intelligence infrastructure, many of whom, by the way, served in previous administrations and who are republicans, are less trustworthy than the russians, then people should pay attention to what our intelligence agencies say.

this is part of what i meant when i said that we've got to think about what's happening to our political culture. the russians can't change us or significantly weaken us. they are a smaller country. they are a weaker country. their economy doesn't produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms. they don't innovate. but they can impact us if we lose track of who we are. they can impact us if we abandon our values. mr. putin can weaken us just like he's trying to weaken europe if we start buying into notions that it's okay to intimidate the press, or locked

up dissidents, or discriminate against people because of their faith or what they look like. and what i worry about more than anything is the degree to which, because of the students of the partisan battle, you have started to see certain folks in the republican party and republican voters suddenly find i government and individuals who stand contrary to everything that we stand for as being okay because that's how much we dislike democrats. i mean think about it. some of the people who historically have been very

critical of me for engaging with russians and having conversations with them, also endorsed the president-elect even as he was saying that we should stop sanctioning russia and being tough on them and work together with them, against our common enemies. it was very complement of mr. putin personally. that wasn't news. the president-elect during the campaign said so. and some folks who had made a career out of being anti-russian didn't say anything about it. and then after the election suddenly they are asking, why didn't you tell us that maybe the russians were trying to help our candidate?

well, come on. there was a survey some of you saw where, no that this is juste poll, but pretty credible source, 37% of republican voters approve of pruden. over a third of republican voters approve of vladimir putin, the former head of the kgb. ronald reagan would roll over in his grave. and how did that happen? it happened in part because, for too long everything that happens in this town, everything that is said is seen through the lens of does it help or hurt us relative

to democrats, or relevant to present obama? and unless that changes, we are going to continue to be formidable to foreign influence because we lost track of what it is what we are about and what we stand for. with respect to the present elects appointments, it is his prerogative as i've always said for him to a point who he thinks can best carry out his foreign-policy or his domestic policy, is up to the senate to advise and consent. there will be plenty of time for members of the senate to go through the record of all his appointees and determine whether or not they are appropriate for the job.

martha raddatz? >> mr. president, i want to talk about vladimir putin again. just to be clear do believe vladimir putin himself authorized the hack and deeply the authorized that to help donald trump? and on the intelligence, one of the things donald trump -- is saddam hussein and the weapons of mass distraction and that they were never found. can you say unequivocally that this was not china, this was not a 400-pound guy sitting on his bed, as donald trump says? and do these kind of -- [inaudible] emboldened the russians? >> you know, when the report comes out before i leave office, that will have drawn together all the threats and so i don't want to step on their work ahead

of time. what i can tell you is that the intelligence that i've seen give me great confidence in their assessments that the russians carried out this attack. -- hack. the hack of the dnc and the hack of john podesta. but again, i think this is exactly what i want the report out so that everybody can review it. and this has been breached and evidence in closed session has been provided on a bipartisan basis, not just just to me, it's been provided to the leaders of the house and the senate and the chairmechairman and ranking memf the relevant committees. and i think that what you've already seen is the way some of the folks at seen the evidence don't dispute, i think the basic assessment that the russians carry this out.

>> but is -- >> martha, i think what i want to make sure of is that i give the intelligence community the chance to gather all the information. but i would make a larger point, which is not much happens in russia without vladimir putin. this is pretty hierarchical operation. last i checked there is not a lot of debate and democratic deliberation, particularly when it comes to policies directed at the united states. we have said, and i will confirm, that this happened at the highest levels of the russian government. and i will let you make that determination as to whether they are high-level russian officials

who go off road and decide to tamper with -- rogue -- the u.s. election process without vladimir putin knowing about it spin so i wouldn't be wrong in saying -- >> martha, i've given you what i'm going to give you. what was your second question? do the tweets and to the statements by donald trump emboldened russia? >> as i said before, i think the president-elect, it's still in transition mode from campaign to governance. i think he hasn't gotten his old team together yet. he still has campaign spokesperson sort of filling in at appearing on cable shows. there's just a whole different attitude and vibe when you're not in power as when you are in power.

so rather than me sort of characterize the appropriateness or inappropriateness of what he's doing at the moment, i i think what we have to see is how will the president-elect operate and how will his team operate when they've been fully briefed on all these issues, they have their hands on all the levers of government and they have to start making decisions. one way i do believe that the president-elect can approach this that would be unifying is to say that we welcome a bipartisan, independent process that gives the american people assurance, not only that votes are counted properly, that the

elections are fair and free, but that we have learned lessons about how internet propaganda from foreign countries can be released in the political bloodstream, and that we've got strategies to deal with it for the future. the more this can be nonpartisan, the better served the american people are going to be which is why i made the point earlier. and going to keep on repeating this point. our vulnerability to russia or any other foreign power is directly related to how divided partisan, dysfunctional our political process is. that's the thing that makes us

vulnerable. if they use that is being released by some foreign government -- fake news is being released by some foreign government is almost identical to reports that are being issued through partisan news venues, then it's not surprising that that foreign propaganda will have a greater effect. because it doesn't seem that far-fetched compared to some of the other stuff that folks are hearing from domestics propagandists. to the extent that our political dialogue is such where everything is under suspicion, everybody is corrupt and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons and all of our

institutions are, you know, full of malevolent actors, if that's the storyline that is being put out there, by whatever party is out of power, then when a foreign government introduces that same argument with facts that are made up, voters who have been listening to that stuff for years, have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio or other venues, they are going to believe it. so if we want to really reduce foreign influence on our elections, then we better think about how to make sure that our

political process, our political dialogue is stronger than it's been. mark? >> thank you, mr. president. move you from russia to china for a moment. >> absolutely. >> your successor spoke by phone with the president of taiwan the other day and declared subsequently that he wasn't sure why the united states needs to be bound by one-china policy. he suggested it can be used as a bargaining chip brats to get better terms on a trade deal or more cooperation with korea. there's already evidence that tensions between the two sides have increased a bit and just today the chinese have season underwater drone in the south china sea. do you agree at some do that our china policy could use a fresh set of eyes eyes, and what's thg deal about having a short phone call with the president of taiwan?

or do you worry that these types of unorthodox approaches are setting up on a collision course with perhaps our biggest geopolitical adversary? >> that's a great question. i'm somewhere in between. i think all of our foreign policy should be subject to fresh eyes. i think one of, i said this before. i'm very proud of the work i've done. i think i'm a better president now than when i started, but if you are here for eight years, in the bubble, you start seeing things a certain way and to benefit from the democracies, that america benefits from some new perspectives. and i think it should be not just the prerogative but the obligation of a new president to examine everything that's been done and see what makes sense and what doesn't. that's what i did when i came in and i'm assuming new president

is going to undertake the same exercises. and given the importance of the relationship between the united states and china, given how much is at stake in terms of the world economy, national security, are present in the asia-pacific, china's increasing role in international affairs, there's probably no bilateral relationship that carries more significance, and, and where there's also the potential if the relationship breaks down or goes into a full conflict mode, that everybody is worse off. i think it's fine for him to take a look at it. what i've advised the president-elect is that across the board on foreign-policy, you

want to make sure that you are doing it in a systematic, deliberate, intentional way. and since there's only one president at a time, my advice to him has been that before he starts having a lot of interactions with foreign governments, other than the usual courtesy calls, that he should want to have his full team in place, that he should want his team to be fully briefed on what's gone on in the past, and where the potential pitfalls may be, where the opportunities are, what we have learned from eight years of experience so that as he is and then maybe taking foreign-policy in a new direction, he's got all the information to make good decisions.

and, by the way, that all of government is moving at the same time and seeing it from -- singing from the same hymnal. and with respect to china, ellis just take the example of taiwan, there has been a long-standing agreement essentially between china, the united states and to some degree the taiwanese, which is to not change the status quo. taiwan operates differently than mainland china does. china views taiwan as part of china, but recognizes that it has to approach taiwan as an entity that has its own ways of

doing things. the taiwanese have agreed that as long as they're able to continue to function with some degree of autonomy, that they won't charge forward and declare independence. and that status quo, although not completely satisfactory to any of the parties involved, has kept the peace and allowed the taiwanese to be pretty successful, economy and a people who have a high degree of self-determination. but understand, for china, the issue of taiwan is as important as anything on their docket. the idea of one china is at the

heart of their conception as a nation. and so if you are going to up and this understanding -- upend -- you have to have thought through what the consequences are because the chinese will not treat that the way they will treat some other issues. they will even treat it the way they treat issues around the south china sea where we have had a lot of tensions. this goes to the core of how they see themselves, and their reaction on this issue could end up being very significant. that doesn't mean that you have to adhere to everything that is done in the past. it does mean you to think it through and have planned for potential reactions that they may engage in. all right.

isaac of the politico speak not thanks mr. president. two questions. first -- [inaudible] >> leads us in a really good spot. [laughter] >> what do you say to the electors are going to meet on monday and are thinking of changing their vote? do you think they should be given an intelligence briefing about russian activity or should the baird might everything you said already? should voters be bound by the state votes as they have gone? and long-term do you think that there's a need for electoral college reform tie to the popular vote? >> it sounded like to but that was all one. [laughter] >> i love how these -- two questions, each one has four parts. [laughter]

spirit of the democratic party, labor secretary and 24 chair of the democratic national committee is the vision you have seen him put forward what you think the party should be focused on? what do you say to some of the complaints who say the phish of shouldn't be a continuation of some of your political approach? part of that is complaints that decisions you have made as president, the leader of the party has to structurally weakened the dnc and the democratic party and to think that has led to or has helped lead to some losses and elections around the country. do you regret any of those decisions? >> okay. still those are my two questions. [laughter] >> i'll take the second one first, and say that tom perez has been i believe one of the best secretary of labor in our history. he is tireless.

he is wicked smart. he has been able to work across the spectrum of, you know, labor, business, activists. he's produced. i mean, if if you look at his body of work on the american working people, what he has pushed for in terms of making sure that workers get a fair deal, decent wages, better benefits, that their safety is protected on the job, he has been extraordinary. now, others who have declared also my friends and i find people as well. and the great thing is i don't have a vote in this.

so we will let the process unfold. i don't think it's going to happen anytime soon. i described to you earlier what i think needs to happen, which is that the democratic party, whether that's entirely through the dnc or through a rebuilding of state parties or some other arrangement, has to work at the grassroots level, has to be present in all 50 states, has to have a presence in counties. have to think about message and how are we speaking directly to voters. i will say this, and i'm not going to engage in too much punditry, but that i could not be prouder of the coalition that i put together in each of my campaigns. because it was inclusive and it

drew in people who normally were not interested in politics and didn't participate. bubut i would like to think, i think i can show that in those elections are always cast a broad net. i always said first and foremost we are americans, that we had a common creed, that there's more that we share than divides us, and i want to talk to everybody and get a chance to get everybody's vote. i still believe what i said in 2004, which is this red state blue thing is a construct. now, it is a a construct that gotten more and more powerful for whole lot of reasons from gerrymandering to big-money to the way that the media is

splintered, and so people are just watching what reinforces their existing biases as opposed to listening to different points of views. there's all kinds of reasons for it, but outside of the realm of electoral politics, i still see people the way i saw them when i made that speech, full of contradictions and there's some regional differences, but basically folks are about their families. they care about having meaningful work. they care about making sure their kids have more opportunity than they did. they want to be safe. they want to feel like things are fair. and whoever leads the dnc and any candidate with democratic brand going forward, i want them

to feel as if they can reach out and find that common ground, to speak to all of america. and that requires some organization. and you're right, and i said this in my earlier remarks, that what i was able to do during my campaign i wasn't able to do in midterms. it's not that we didn't put in time and effort into. i put time and effort into it. but the coalition i put together didn't always turn out to be transferable. and yo you know, the challenge s that, you know, some of that just had to do with the fact that when you're the party in power and people are going through hard times like they were in 2010, they are going to punish to some degree the president party, regardless of

what organizational work is done. some of it has to do with just some deep standing traditional challenges for democrats, like drink off your elections, the electorate is older and we do better with a younger electorate. but we know those things are true. and i didn't crack the code on that. and other people have ideas about how to do that even better, i'm all for it. so, on, with respect to the electors, i'm not going to wait into the issue because again, it's the american people job and now the electors job to decide my successor. it is up my job decide my successor. i have provided people with a lot of information about what happened during the course of the election. but more importantly, the

candidates themselves i think talked about their beliefs and their vision for america. the president-elect i think has been very explicit about what he cares about and what he believes in. and so it's not in my hands now. it's up to them. [inaudible] spirit long term with respect to the electoral college, the electoral college is a carryover from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work that put a lot of premium on states ad it used to be that the senate was not elected directly. it was through state legislators. it's the same type of thinking that gives wyoming two senators

with about half a million people, and california with 33 million, get the same two. so there are some structures in our political system as envisioned by the founders that sometimes are going to disadvantaged democrats. but the truth of the matter is, is that if we have a strong message, if we are speaking what the american people care about, typically the popular vote and the electoral college vote will align. and i guess, i guess part of my overall message here as i leave for the holidays is that if we look for one explanation or one

silver bullet or one easy fix for our politics, then we are probably going to be disappointed. they are just a lot of factors in what's happened, not just over the last few months but over the last decade that has made both politics and governance more challenging. and i think everybody has raised legitimate questions and legitimate concerns. i do hope that we all just take some time, take a breath or data survey what i am to advise democrats, to just reflect a little bit more about how can we, how can we get to a place where people are focused on working together, based on at

least some common set of facts? how can we had a conversation about policy that doesn't demonize each other? how can we channel what i think is the basic decency and goodness of the american people that reflects itself in our politics as opposed to it being so polarized and so nasty that in some cases you have voters and elected officials who have more confidence and faith in a a foreign adversary than they have in their neighbors. you know. and those go to some bigger issues. how is it that we have some voters are some elected officials who think that

michelle obama is healthy eating initiative, you know, school nutrition program is a greater threat to democracy than, you know, our government going after the press if they are issuing a story they don't like? all right? that's an issue that i think we've got to wrestle with. and we will. people have asked me how do you feel after the election and so forth, and i say well, look, this is a clarifying moment. it's a useful reminder that voting counts, politics counts, what the president-elect is going to be doing is going to be

very different than what i was doing, and i think people will be able to compare and contrast and make judgments about what worked for the american people. and i hope that building of the progress we have made, that what the president-elect is proposing works. what i can say with confidence is that what we have done works. that i can prove. i can show you where we were in 2008 and i can show you where we are now, and you can't argue that we are not better off. we are. and for that, i think the american people more importantly i think, not more importantly, as importantly, i was going to say josh earnest who is done such a great job.

[laughter] for that i think the american people. i think the men and women in uniform who serve. i haven't gotten to the point yet where i've been overly sentimental. i will tell you i was doing my last christmas party photo line. many of you have participated, they are pretty long. right at the end of the line, the presidents marine corps band comes in. those who have been performing, and i take a picture with them, and it was a blast of that i scored to take a picture with my marine corps band after an event pic and i got, i got a little choked up. i was in front of marines had to like to tamp it down. but it was just like one small example of all the people who have contributed to our success. i am responsible for where we have screwed up, the successes

are widely shared with all the amazing people who have been part of this administration, okay? thank you, everybody. [inaudible] >> i don't know. i enjoyed it. >> in about one hour president-elect donald trump hold another victory rally in florida after winning that states 27 electoral votes by over 120,000 votes. see his rally with supporters in orlando live 7 p.m. eastern on c-span. she spends "washington journal" live every day with news and policy issues that impact you. coming up saturday morning texas republican elected will join us and discuss why he publicly stated that he will not be voting for donald trump when the electoral college meets on monday. then joe garcia presents other western and a state commission for higher educa w