 Senoras e senores, su majestad, el rey de España e el presidente de los Estados Unidos. Ladies and gentlemen, his majesty, the king of Spain and the president of the United States. Majestad, señor presidente de los Estados Unidos norteamérica, senores ministros, señoras e senores. Permitidme, majestad, que expresa ao señor presidente de los Estados Unidos la satisfacción y el alto honor que como español siento de poder darle la bienvenida no solamente en nombre de este grupo cualificado de personalidades que representan un amplio espectro de la administración. La política, la milicia, la diplomacia, la banca, la economía, la empresa, la cultura, la universidad, los medios de comunicación, etc etc sino de tantos outros españoles que les hubiera gustado asistir a este acto e que por razones de espacio e no por otras, no pueden estar con nosotros. Puedo asegurarle, señor presidente, porque así me consta que son muchos los españoles de todo estado e condición que se unen a este encuentro. Con nuestra presencia, señor presidente, le testimoníamos el respeto e la admiración que nos merece su persona e todo lo que representa. É mucho lo que nos queda por aprender de los Estados Unidos de norteamérica. A nadie se le oculta la trastendencia de esta reunión ya que es la primera vez ao largo de nuestra dilatada historia que un presidente de los Estados Unidos se reúne con tan variada representación de la vida española. Personalmente e también por lo que pudiera representar desearía, señor presidente, que su visita sirviera para intensificar las relaciones entre los dos países, ya que no en vano compartimos modelos culturales e ideales de libertad tanto en la forma de vida como en el sistema de empresa. Sin tales libertades, no se puede construir una verdadera democracia ni mucho menos llevar a cabo un auténtico progreso económico e social. Conviene recordar porque es justo que así se haga e diga que Europa, a la que pertenecemos, ha recibido e sigue recibiendo de los Estados Unidos de norteamérica, entre otras cosas, la ciencia e el arte de la dirección de las empresas e de la profesionalización de sus directivos, en el más amplo e alto sentido de la palabra, lo que constituye una aportación valiosa e importante para la economía moderna e para la sociedad. Todo ello en justa forma. Homen, es un gran honro de ser con tú hoy. He querido revisar España sin que eu first became presidenta e eu exigí que finalmente podíamos enredar en este año. After all it's already been almost 5 centuries since your first delegation visited our country. We have much to celebrate as we approach the 500th anniversary of the voyage of Christopher Columbus. And it's no exaggeration to say that we stand at the outset of a new golden age, a golden age of freedom that is sweeping across both the old world and the new. I'm convinced that historians will look back on Iberia's peaceful and joyful embrace of democracy as a decisive turning point. They will see it as the moment when freedom ended a long retreat and began a broad new advance that has spread from Spain and Portugal to the Americas and has in one short decade brought over 225 million people into the family of free nations. Freedom we see is contagious and the force of your example has inspired a continent. When I first became president a little over four years ago the map of our hemisphere was shadowed by dictatorships. Country after country the dictators have given way to the democratic aspirations of their people. Today for the first time ever the exceptions to the democratic tide in Spanish speaking America can be counted on the fingers of one hand. They number four, two Paraguay and Chile have entrenched military rule. The two others Cuba and Nicaragua are communist tyrannies. Sometimes the courage and character of one man can shake the course of history. Throughout the last decade King Juan Carlos has set a moral example of this country and of the world and in the storm of events he has been like an anchor holding fast to the principles of democracy and freedom. Your Majesty you are a true representative of the democratic aspirations of the Spanish people. All true democrats all freedom loving people everywhere salute you. We salute to the remarkable achievement of the people of this land. Any visitor here can see that freedom is flourishing. For democracy to succeed its roots must grow deep and wide. This means social cooperation, national unity and a willingness to share power. En short, con vivencia, a wonderful word to describe the culture of democracy. Spain's proud achievements rank among the foremost contributions to western civilization but for too long this great nation was excluded from the community of western democracies and we were all diminished by your absence. Now Spain is an important partner in the free alliance of the European democracies, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that has protected our liberties and kept the peace for almost 40 years, the longest period of peace Europe has known since the Roman Empire and we need Spain. Soon Spain will take its rightful place as a full member in the European community, the largest free economic union in the world, larger even than that other economic union and free trade zone the United States. Your accession into the European economic community will create opportunities for both our countries and we have consistently backed and applaud Spanish and Portuguese membership in the EC. Today we've come to understand that all the nations of the earth are part of one global economy, our economic fates interwoven in a tapestry of a million connecting threads. We understand that we break those ties only at our peril for if too many of them are severed our prosperity will begin to unravel. I am old enough to remember the dark days of the great depression when short-sighted national interest and beggar thy neighbor economic policies ended up turning us all into beggars and plunged the world into a totalitarian nightmare from which we did not escape until the end of a long and bloody world war. With that lesson fresh in their minds, the leaders of democratic Europe, the United States and other free nations met after World War II and agreed to demolish the trade barriers that had done so much evil. Their agreement called the general agreement on tariffs and trade knocked tariff barriers down to their lowest level in modern history and contributed to an unrivaled period of world economic expansion that helped to rebuild the war-ravaged European continent and gave the free nations a standard of living that would once have been thought unattainable. Trade continues to fuel the global economy today. Over one quarter the world's output is traded internationally more than twice as much as in 1970. But these gains are increasingly threatened by demands for protectionism. Protectionism is the wrong word. We should call it by its real name destructionism. We will continue to resist these destructive pressures but to succeed all our governments must cooperate. The nations at the Bon Economic Summit took an important step forward in calling for another round of trade negotiations. Soon we will realize that in a global economy all markets are common markets and that we will advance most quickly down the road of progress when we walk together. Let's also keep in our minds the enormous contribution made by the free movement of capital and respect for property rights. Spain has been attracting an increasing amount of foreign investment reflecting a growing confidence in Spain's economic future and the stability of our institutions. A confidence I fully share. Like the global economy our national economies benefit from freedom and suffer in its absence. In the 1960s were boom years for the West and Europe achieved an unprecedented level of prosperity. But come the 70s the secret seemed to have been lost throughout the western industrialized nations. Growth sputtered and almost died out. Inflation raged out of control. More and more people lost their jobs. Innovation and productivity lagged. Instead of building the future we seem to be slipping back into the past. As pessimism replaced progress voices were raised saying that our decline was inevitable. Our world they said was rapidly running out of resources and we must rely on government to distribute fairly our dwindling economic wealth. People began to lose faith in freedom and it became fashionable to talk of a convergence between the free democratic countries and the totalitarian dictatorships. I know that Spain had its own share of these problems. Moreover you had to face them while confronting the demands of your historic transition to democracy. You have a starkly descriptive word for the human costs of economic malaise. Paro. Every nation is different and solutions must take those differences into account. But I believe strongly that there are certain basic principles which applied wisely can benefit all. From your introduction Mr. Boada I would guess that these principles enjoy widespread support among members of the APD. That is one of the reasons I am particularly pleased to be here. In the United States we rejected pessimism. We came to believe that government was more the problem than the solution. That the massive growth of government spending was weighing down the private sector and that huge increases in taxes and regulations were stifling individual initiative and destroying opportunity for our people. In our country we've always held it as an article of faith that freedom works. We came into office determined to give freedom a chance. So in the United States we began by cutting taxes bringing the top rate down dramatically and lowering tax rates across the board by about nearly one quarter. By reducing unnecessary regulations we limited the role of government and set enterprise free without endangering the essential protections that a compassionate society must provide. Many economists schooled in the old policies of government control predicted disaster. Instead as the recovery took hold inflation and interest rates dropped new businesses began incorporating at the astounding rate of over 600,000 a year and employment took off up about 8 million new jobs and in 1984 we enjoyed the strongest economic growth in three decades. We've decided that freedom works so well in creating jobs and opportunity for the American people that we want even more of it. When I return to the United States I will be presenting an historic tax reform proposal to our legislature that will not only cut tax rates even further but make them less progressive. We believe that there is nothing progressive about tax rates that discourage people from climbing up the ladder of success. Some point to our budget deficits is the source of our economic expansion but if that were true why did a decade of deficit spending in the 70s fail to revitalize our lagging economy? The fact is that many of the western industrialized nations have larger deficits as a percentage of their gross national product than the United States and yet their recoveries have been sluggish. Deficits slow growth, they don't create it and we're committed to a program that will cut government overspending and bring our budget into balance by the end of the decade. But at the same time we found that the greatest barriers to risk taking investment and a strong growing economy are steep progressive tax rates. Our experience has shown us that government alone cannot stimulate economic progress, but it can set it free. The western developed nations have led the world in creating a higher standard of living for their citizens through the growth of personal freedom, the same freedom that is the soul of human happiness and spiritual fulfillment. Nevertheless, some governments try to control their economies. They've taken over many industries and subsidized others. They've subsidized exports and protected themselves against imports. They've sent their immigrants home in order to relieve unemployment and they've passed strict job laws that restrict the movement of labor. But as controls multiplied, investment lagged, growth slowed and employment declined. The one measure not taken is the one that has proven time and time again to be most effective, cutting marginal personal income tax rates. The historical record is clear. Tax cuts work. Germany lifted itself out of the ashes of World War II in the late 1940s when Ludwig Erhard reduced that country's tax rates. Starting in 1950, over 20 years of tax cutting did the same for the Japanese, catapulting them out of under development and into the front ranks of world economic powers. Between 1973 and 1975, Austria gave itself the largest tax cut in recent European history, making her economy more vibrant among democratic socialist nations. In my own country, we have had three major rounds of tax cuts in the 20s, the 60s, and the 80s, setting off three of the most prosperous periods in our history. Each time, critics said we were giving huge breaks to the wealthy at the expense of the poor. But each time, after taxes were cut, the wealthy ended up paying a larger share of the total tax burden, as lower rates attracted more money into productive investment instead of into sterile areas of tax avoidance. Tax cuts, a boon to the industrialized countries, are a necessity to the nations of the third world where tax rates often rise faster, higher and steeper, blocking economic growth and blocking them into under development. Throughout Africa and Latin America, we see that when markets are relatively free and tax rates are lower, there is a faster rise in the people's standard of living. And in Asia, economic freedom has really taken hold, fueling the meteoric rise of the Pacific Basin nations, boosting the ASEAN countries, and even giving communists China a helpful push to the prosperity. Soon we may see an economic revolution in India where Rajiv Gandhi is reducing regulations, lowering tariffs and slashing taxes. In our country, a whole new generation of entrepreneurs has emerged. Men and women with new ideas and the tenacity to make them happen have sparked a renaissance of innovation, making new breakthroughs every day in such 21st century technologies as bioengineering, microchips and fiber optics. It's been individuals, small businessmen and entrepreneurs who have fueled America's economic boom. It is estimated that seven out of ten of all of our new jobs have come from small, new and growing firms. One of the largest, most successful personal computer firms in America was started by two college students in the garage behind their house. That's one reason why we believe special tax breaks and subsidies for existing big businesses won't do the trick. Many nations have lower corporate taxes and much more generous investment credits and tax write-offs for business than we do in America. But the most fertile and rapidly growing of any economy is that part that exists right now only as a dream in someone's head or an inspiration in his or her heart. No one can ever predict where change will come from or foresee the industries of the future. No government would ever target those two young men working through the night making dreams come true in their garage. If we put our trust in experts and rely on their knowledge to shape our destiny, then we condemn ourselves to live in the past. For how can they be experts in what hasn't been invented yet? What doesn't yet exist? In 1899, the head of the United States Patent Bureau advised our then president to abolish that office because he said everything that can be invented has been invented. But at one point, Thomas Watson, the man behind IBM, which is today one of the largest manufacturers of computers in the world, is reported to have said, quote, I think there is a world market for about five computers. Well, 500 years ago there lived a man who believed in the accepted wisdom. His stubborn adherence to his vision made him an exile from his own land and brought him seeking financial backing to Spain. George Santiana, a son of Spain, wrote a poem of him. Columbus found a world and had no chart, saved one that faith deciphered in the skies but thus the soul's invincible surmise was all his science and his only art. Christopher Columbus was one of the original entrepreneurs. Like many would come after him, he didn't discover what he had set out to find, but his discovery quite literally changed the shape of the known world, turned it upside down and began a whole new chapter in the history of man. In the 70s, some said we had reached, quote, the limits to growth, but we decided they were telling us the earth was flat when it really is round. We decided to discover a new world, not subject to such pessimistic constraints. A new world of hope and opportunity where our tomorrows are as limitless as the horizon. A half a millennium after Columbus, wouldn't this be the best way to celebrate for the people of the new and the old worlds to join with each other on a new voyage of exploration and discovery and together stake our claim on the future. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the lasting friendship between our two nations.