And let me add that the benefits of KORUS extend beyond the economic bottom line. Because this agreement represents a powerful strategic bet. It signals that America and South Korea are partners for the long term-economically, diplomatically, people to people. So, for all these reasons, President Obama is pursuing congressional approval of KORUS, together with necessary Trade Adjustment Assistance, as soon as possible. He is also pursuing passage of the Colombia and Panamanian Free Trade Agreements as well.
Now, we have learned that, in our system, getting trade deals right is challenging, painstaking work. But it's essential. We consider KORUS a model agreement. Asian nations have signed over 100 bilateral trade deals in less than a decade, but many of those agreements fall short on key protections for businesses, workers, and consumers. There are a lot of bells and whistles, but many of the hard questions are glossed over or avoided.
Beyond that, there is now a danger of creating a hodgepodge of inconsistent and partial bilateral agreements which may lower tariffs, but which also create new inefficiencies and dizzying complexities. A small electronics shop, for example, in the Philippines might import alarm clocks from China under one free trade agreement, calculators from Malaysia under another, and so on-each with its own obscure rules and mountains of paperwork-until it no longer even makes sense to take advantage of the trade agreements at all. Instead, we should aim for true regional integration.
That is the spirit behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the so-called TPP, which we hope to outline by the time of APEC in November, because this agreement will bring together economies from across the Pacific-developed and developing alike-into a single trading community.
Our goal for TPP is to create not just more growth, but better growth. We believe the TPP needs to include strong protections for workers, the environment, intellectual property, and innovation. It should also promote the free flow of information technology and the spread of green technology, as well as the coherence of our regulatory system and the efficiency of supply chains.
We are working to ensure that the TPP is the first trade pact designed specifically to reduce barriers for small and medium-sized enterprises. After all, these are the companies that create most of the world's jobs, but they often face significant challenges to engaging in international trade. So, the TPP aims to ensure fair competition, including competitive neutrality among the state-owned and private enterprises.
The idea is to create a new high standard for multilateral free trade, and to use the promise of access to new markets to encourage nations to raise their standards and join. We are taking concrete steps to promote regional integration and put ourselves on a path over time to bring about a genuine Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific.
Finally, we need to pursue strategies for achieving not just growth, but sustainable, inclusive growth. Now, it is a maxim of mine that foreign policy must deliver results for people. Because ultimately, our progress will not be measured by profit margins or GDP, but by the quality of people's lives - whether men and women can work in dignity, earn a decent wage, raise healthy families, educate their children, and take hold of the opportunities to improve their own and the next generation's futures.
The United States supports a number of endeavors to promote inclusive growth in the region. Our Millennium Challenge Corporation, for example, makes large-scale investments in partner countries to reduce poverty through growth. We have a compact with the Philippines to invest in roads, community development projects, and more effective tax collection. We are negotiating a compact with Indonesia to promote low carbon development, and we began a threshold partnership with Timor-Leste earlier this year to fight corruption and improve children's health.
Across the region, we are partnering with governments to encourage and help them uphold their commitments to inclusive growth by practicing good governance, providing public goods like health and education, and creating tax systems that improve revenue collection and ensure that everyone pays their fair share. We are supporting civil society and citizens alike in holding governments accountable, supplying job training and networking, and being a strong voice for bringing opportunity to places where it is scarce.
And we are working very closely with the private sector. Two years ago, I created a Global Partnership Initiative to support a new generation of public-private partnerships focused on everything from protecting and developing the Lower Mekong region to helping more families gain access to clean cookstoves, to protect them from the harmful smoke that kills two million people worldwide every year, and puts black soot carbon into the atmosphere.
We also launched the Global Entrepreneurship Program, to identify promising entrepreneurs, training them, linking them with mentors and potential investors, advocating for supportive policies and regulations, helping spread best practices. And we are supporting initiatives like Partners for a New Beginning, which supports economic opportunity, education, science and technology exchanges between the United States and Muslim communities worldwide, and we just opened a chapter in Indonesia.
We are connecting entrepreneurs with Diaspora communities in the United States that are eager to help fund new projects in countries where they have family ties. And we are looking to the private sector to help us. There are so many ways that we are grateful to the private sector. After all, it drives what we are talking about today. But we do need to try to consider, even within the constraints of modern financial practices and expectations, not just short-term benefits but long-term consequences. The work that each of you do in your businesses can help lift people's lives, promote human rights and dignity, and create new markets, creating a virtuous cycle. Or it can further ensnare people in poverty and environmental degradations, creating a vicious cycle.
So that's our agenda, and you can see why I've come to Hong Kong to talk about it, because here, we have a perfect example of what can be done and how important it is to lead in the economic realm with the kind of principles that Hong Kong has developed on. Now, we know very well that the future is arriving at a breathtaking pace, and the choices we make today will define what is possible economically for so many millions of people
And so while the specifics are forever changing, many of the ideals that guided us in the 20th century are the same ones we need to embrace in the 21st - a belief that a good idea is a good idea no matter where it comes from or from whom, a willingness to embrace change, a culture driven by marriage, faith in the notion that a rising tide of economic growth and innovation can improve everyone's quality of life whether they live in Hong Kong or Appalachia. It is up to us to translate those enduring principles into common practice, shared prosperity, the opportunity for as many people as possible on both sides of the Pacific to live up to their God-given potential.
And what is standing in the way of achieving that vision? Well, there are many issues and challenges we can enumerate, but ultimately, it comes down to leadership - leadership in both the public and the private sector. We were blessed over the last part of the 20th century with farsighted and effective leaders in many parts of the world, leaders who set the rules that created the economic growth that we enjoyed in the 20th century, leaders who changed course in their own nations and catalyzed the extraordinary growth that we have seen in a country like China, leaders who had visions, private sector leaders who were able to look over the horizon and understand the consequences of not just this quarter's results but the decades. We need that leadership again. We need it everywhere. And we need it both in governments and in business. That's why the partnership between the public and private sectors is so essential.
Sitting in the office of the Secretary of State and knowing that I'm here in this position after so many luminaries in my own country have held it, it is a very humbling experience. And I often marvel at what they achieved. And I think a lot about George Marshall and Harry Truman and the Marshall Plan. What an amazing decision - to rebuild former enemies with an eye toward the future. And I think about it in very personal terms, because at the end of World War II, my late father had served in the Navy, so when he left service as so many men of that time did and returned to private life, the last thing he wanted to hear his president or secretary of State say was, "Guess what? We're going to still be taxing you to send money to Germany, to Europe. We're going to rebuild Japan because we believe it is in the best interests of your children."
But it wasn't only our public leadership who sounded that note. It was also our business leadership as well who basically said, "Okay, we get it. And we're willing to do our part as well." In fact, when support for the program was flagging, the White House and the State Department called the heads of large corporations and universities and asked them to fan out across the United States making the case. So the United States invested $13 billion over four years, which in today's money would be about 150 billion.
Imagine leaders today in either government or business going to their people and saying something similar. When the Berlin Wall fell, Helmut Kohl said, "We're going to pay what it takes to reunify Germany and we're going to rebuild our neighbors because the wall is gone," and people said, "Oh, what a incredible investment of our money. We won; we should be the ones getting all the benefits." But no; it was a decision that was supported by both government and business.
We face a lot of similar challenges today, and we need visionary leaders in both government and business. But those leaders need to be guided by these principles. Whether we're talking about politics or economics, openness, transparency, freedom and fairness stand the test of time. And in the 21st century, every citizen who is now potentially connected with everyone else in the world will not sit idly by if those principles do not deliver, and if governments and business do not make good on when we'll provide long-term opportunity for all.
This agenda is good for Asia, it's good for America, it's good for business. Most importantly, it's good for people. And I absolutely believe it will help us create more a peaceful, stable, and prosperous world for the rest of this century. Thank you all very much.
