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00:00My fellow Americans, this week, as we prepared for Thanksgiving, Canada held an important election,
00:06and I'm pleased to again send my congratulations to Prime Minister Mulroney.
00:10One of the important issues in the Canadian election was trade,
00:13and like our own citizens earlier this month, our neighbors have sent a strong message
00:18rejecting protectionism and reaffirming that more trade, not less, is the wave of the future.
00:24Here in America, as we reflect on the many things we have to be grateful for,
00:28we should take a moment to recognize that one of the key factors behind our nation's great prosperity
00:34is the open trade policy that allows the American people to freely exchange goods and services
00:39with free people around the world.
00:42The freedom to trade is not a new issue for America.
00:45In 1776, our founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence,
00:51charging the British with a number of offenses, among them, and I quote,
00:55cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, end quote.
00:59And that same year, a Scottish economist named Adam Smith launched another revolution
01:05with a book entitled The Wealth of Nations, which exposed for all time the folly of protectionism.
01:12Over the past 200 years, not only has the argument against tariffs and trade barriers
01:16won nearly universal agreement among economists,
01:19but it has also proven itself in the real world where we have seen free trading nations prosper
01:25while protectionist countries fall behind.
01:29America's most recent experiment with the protectionism
01:31was a disaster for the working men and women of this country.
01:35When Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff in 1930,
01:38we were told that it would protect America from foreign competition
01:42and save jobs in this country, the same line we hear today.
01:47The actual result was the Great Depression,
01:50the worst economic catastrophe in our history.
01:53One out of four Americans were thrown out of work.
01:56Two years later, when I cast my first ballot for president,
02:00I voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
02:02who opposed protectionism and called for the repeal of that disastrous tariff.
02:07One out of five Americans,