U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said that China’s Growth Benefits American consumers, the average American citizen.

Powell made the remarks at the McConnell Center for Political Leadership, University of Louisville, Kentucky on November 19, 2001.

The secretary told his audience, “When I was in China a few weeks ago, accompanying President Bush to a meeting of Asian and Pacific leaders, I was amazed at how the city of Shanghai had grown compared to the Shanghai that I had visited some 30 years earlier.”

Powell said,  “China’s remarkable growth of the past two decades has come from investing the savings of the Chinese people, from the capital of foreign businesspeople, and from the profits earned by Chinese exporters.”

Powell stressed that “ China’s growth benefits American consumers, the average American citizen, who can find good value in a Chinese product at a local store. This kind of two-way trade helps everyone, benefits both societies. And that’s why free trade is so important, and that’s what free trade is all about.”

Speaking of China’s entry into WTO, Powell explained, “ Freer trade will help other economies -- in Asia, in Africa, in Europe, in our own hemisphere, in the Americas -- all of them being given the opportunity to create the jobs needed to lift more of their people out of poverty and out of despair. Trade is good for all of us, producers and consumers alike, and that is why we were so pleased to see China, as well as Taiwan, become members of the World Trading Organization earlier this month.”