On October 7, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon met in the President's office in the Old Executive Office Building at an unknown time between 3:48 pm and 4:12 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 285-043 of the White House Tapes.
Transcript (AI-Generated)This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.
Seven weeks ago, I announced that an economic policy would stop the rise in prices to create new jobs to protect the American economy.
Tonight, I want to report to you about how that new policy has been working and describe how that policy will be continued.
On the international front, I am glad to report substantial progress in our campaign to create a new monetary stability and bring a new variance in world trade.
That's just as this nation welcomes foreign competition.
We have a right to expect that our trading partners abroad will welcome American competition.
It is a healthy development.
The world has come to understand that America believes in free trade as long as it is fair trade.
This will mean more sales of American goods abroad, more jobs for American workers abroad.
Burger is a job front.
The House of Representatives just yesterday passed a tax program based on my recommendations that will create an additional half a million new jobs in the coming years.
I call upon the Senate, which has begun hearings on this bill, to act as promptly as the House so that we can move forward to our goal of full employment at this time.
The Secretary of the Treasury and I will be meeting with the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Senator Russell Long, in Louisiana tomorrow to further discuss this program.
On the inflation front, I can report to you tonight that the wage price breach has been remarkably successful.
You heard in your evening newscast tonight.
So, the figures you heard in your evening newscast bear this out.
Wholesale prices in September posted the biggest decline since 1966.
And the price of industrial commodities has declined for the first time in seven years.
The primary credit for the success of this first step in the fight against rising prices belongs to the American people.
It was you who showed a willingness to cooperate in the campaign against the plane.
It is you who have answered the call to put the public interest ahead of the special interests.
You have made possible a strong beginning in our all-out effort to hold down the cost of living.
Thousands of letters have been forwarded to the White House since I announced the anti-inflation program.
Listen to what people all across America and all walks of life think of this program.
From a teacher in New Jersey, I am a widow raising two sons and my teacher's son.
I will lose about $300 because of the brief.
Yet I sincerely hope we must all support your efforts to bring the economy to life.
From a wager in Lantag, New York, as one who is expecting an increase in income this December, let me say that I will gladly go without it.
that will help girl fields.
From the life of a government employee in Pampa, Texas, we are willing as a family to forego races in order to seize stability and prices.
Let us hope that Americans will once again realize that we must be willing to sacrifice for a long-range goal and once again have pride in our country.
From a man in Klamath Falls, Oregon,
Your administration's recent freeze on wages and prices means that I will not receive the 4% raise that was written into my contract this year.
Nevertheless, I support your efforts to halt inflation, including the wage freeze.
The fight against inflation is everybody's fight.
Thousands of others.
I want the thousands of others who have written similar letters.
The thousands of others who have written similar letters.
To know how much it has mattered to thousands and thousands of others, and thousands of others who wrote similar letters, I want you to know how much your letters have mattered.
To hear that most Americans put their country's interests above their personal interests, fighting the battle of oppression.
To put their country above their personal interests, fighting the battle of oppression.
Let us look to the future.
Because of the strong beginning.
Why?
Because the determination Americans have shown to pull together during the briefings.
To thousands of others who have written letters, I want you to know how much I appreciate your concern.
The fact that you are welcome to, but the country's interest above personal interest, means of this program alone.
I look to you.
Because of our strong being, because of the determination Americans have shown to pull together during the breeze, I am confident that our further action, stopping inflation, will succeed as well.
I have consulted over the past seven weeks with scores of representatives of labor and business, farmers and consumers, Congress, state and local officers.
They have been virtually unanimous in their belief
The battle against inflation must be fought here and now.
They are together in their determination to win that battle.
Consequently, I am announcing tonight that when the 90-day freeze is over on November 13, we shall continue our program of wage and price restraint.
We began this battle against inflation for the purpose of winning.
We are going to stay in it until we do it.
I am running a price stretch to hold down prices.
It will be made up of persons outside of government, all public members, not beholden to any special interest group.
The price commission will develop yardsticks and will be empowered to restrain price and rent increases to the necessary minimum and to prevent windfall profits.
Its goal will be to continue to drive down the rate of inflation.
Its goal, however, can be achieved
only with the active cooperation of working men in business, farmers and consumers, members of the Congress and our state over and over.
That means all of us.
I'm also warning the paywall to stop inflationary wage and salary increases, the kind of increases that do not really benefit the working people.
For example, in the past six years, workers have received big wage increases.
But every wife of a worker knows that those increases have practically all been eaten up by a rise in the cost of labor.
The paperwork will be made up of representatives of labor magic for the McDonald's.
Both the Price Commission and the paper will seek voluntary cooperation from business and labor.
But they will be backed by the authority of law to make their decisions different.
Their staff will be small.
Stabilization must be made to work not by an army of bureaucrats, but by an army of patriotic
but by an all-volunteer army of patriotic citizens in every walk of life.
The House of Living Council, which is headed by the Secretary of the Treasury, will have the power to clamp down the pay board and the price commission with government sanctions where necessary.
Our experience over the past seven weeks proves conclusively that the vast majority of Americans will cooperate wholeheartedly with the system of voluntary restraint.
if there are any who try to take advantage of the patriotic cooperation of the fellow Americans.
However, I can assure you that the government must be and will be prepared to act against them.
For that reason, I today, I this afternoon, ask the congressional leaders to extend for one year the Economic Stabilization Act, which gives the President the power he needs to start the election.
Voting the line against inflation means voting all for it.
Consequently, I am appointing a government committee on interest and dividends to apply a yardstick to both these areas, headed by Dr. Arthur Burns, Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
The nation needs interest rates as low as they can be to meet the federal requirements of American families and agricultural farms, and to stimulate noninflationary economic expansion.
I am confident that this can be accomplished on a voluntary basis.
As a safeguard, however, I will ask the Congress to stand by patrols over interest rates and interest.
Let me turn now to the subject of profits.
Many of my good friends have advised me that the only politically popular position to take is to be against profits.
But let us recognize an unassailable tax on economic life.
All Americans will benefit from moral profits.
More profits fuel the expansion that generates more jobs.
More profits means more investments will make more goods for our economy.
More profits means there'll be more tax revenues to pay for the programs that help people in need.
That's why higher profits in the American economy would be good for every person in America.
Windfall profits, however, are quite another matter.
When wages and other costs are held down, even though prices are also held down, circumstances could arise in some cases that might generate exorbitant profits.
In the few cases where this happens, rather than tax such profits, will be that business should pass along a fair share of its cost savings to the consumer by cutting prices.
We've lived too long in this country with an inflation psychology.
Everybody just assumes that the only direction for prices is to go up.
Time has come for some price reduction psychology.
Let's see some prices go down.
It is not only in the public interest, but it makes good competitive business sense.
Summing up these actions to stop the rise of capitalism, I think this is what we will do and what we will not do.
We will prevent some adjustments in prices and wages if fairness advance.
We will not prevent inflation from flourishing again.
We will concentrate on those major portions of the economy that are primary causes of inflation, but we will not hesitate to take action against any part of the economy that fails to comply.
We will continue price and wage restraints until inflationary pressures are brought under control, and we will not make controls a permanent feature of American life.
When they are no longer needed, we will get rid of them.
We will rely primarily on the good faith and voluntary cooperation of the American people to make this program work, but we will not let any selfish interest group escape the fair enforcement of the law.
I hope on all of you tonight to look at this program not as Democrats or Republicans, workers or businessmen, farmers or consumers, but as Americans.
Let us recognize this profound truth.
What is best for all of us is best for each of us in the long run.
We cannot afford a business as usual attitude anywhere, because fighting inflation is everybody's business.
Let us look at the future.
Let us look for a moment in the future.
I have said that 1972 will be a very good year for the American economy.
Let me broaden that as we speak.
Coming here can be more than a very good year for the American economy.
It can be a great year for America and the world.
It can be a year for the first time in 15 years in which we can achieve our goal of prosperity in a time of peace.
It can be a year in which great progress can be made toward our goal of a full planet, without the inflation that robs working people of the full value of the dollar today.
It can be a year in which the American competitive spirit is reborn, as we open up new markets for our goods of gold, and new careers for our workers.
to be a year in which we and our international trading partners build upon the most significant initiative in monetary affairs in 25 years.
A year in which we replace the crisis-prone system of the past with a new system of children's education.
A year in which we replace the crisis-prone system of the past with a new system of children's education.
It will be a year in which historic events will take place on the international scene.
Events that could affect the peace of the world in the next generation or even the next century.
We often hear people say, these are troubled times.
I say these are great and exciting times.
We are at the threshold of a great new year, an age of movement and challenge and change.
We have an unparalleled opportunity to create a better world for ourselves and for our children.
Let us dedicate ourselves tonight to make the most of our opportunities, to join in a great common effort to stop inflation and to create a new prosperity in a world of peace.