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 6:10 pm and 7:11 pm. The Old Executive Office Building taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 286-007 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 Do not cite this transcript as authoritative.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.
A lot of them I'll catch up in the car radios, but I'd like to know what they did to them, where you could follow them directly.
But each and every once they did it, each one out there, whether they did carry it in the evening or not.
All right, I'll catch you.
Good evening.
Seven weeks ago, I announced the new economic policy.
It's to stop the rise in prices, to create new jobs, and to protect the American dollar.
Tonight I want to report to you about how that new policy has been working and describe how the policy will be continued.
On the international front, I'm glad to report substantial progress in our campaign to create a new monetary stability and bring a new fairness to world trade.
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 that 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 and more jobs for American fishermen at home.
Further, a job from the House of Representatives just yesterday passed a tax program based on my recommendations that will create an additional $500 million in the coming year.
I call upon the Senate, which has begun hearings in this bill today, to act as promptly as the House so that we can move forward to our goal of full-fledged peacetime.
Secretary Conley and I will meet tomorrow morning with Senator Russell Wall of Louisiana, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, to work on this program.
On the inflation front, I can report to you tonight that the wage price freeze has been remarkably successful.
The figures you heard tonight on your evening broadcast don't bear the sun.
The figures that you heard tonight on your evening newscast bear the sun.
Wholesale prices in September posed the biggest decline in five years, and the price of industrial commodities has declined for the first time in seven years.
The primary right to the success of this first step in fighting this right to prices belongs to you, the American people.
It is you who have shown a willingness to cooperate and fight against the question.
It is you who managed to call upon the public interest and the special interests.
You have made possible this strong beginning and an all-out effort to hold down the customer.
Thousands of letters have poured into the White House since I announced the annual inflation program on this Disney.
Listen to what people all across America, from all walks of life, have to say about that program.
Here's one from the school teacher in New Jersey.
I am a widow, raising two sons and my teacher's son.
I will lose about $300 because of the breeze.
Yet I sincerely feel we must all support your efforts to bring the economy into balance.
Here's one from a wage earner in Atlanta, New York.
As one of you expecting an increase in income this December, let me say, I will gladly go without it, if that will help curtail the recession.
Here's a letter from the wife of a government employee in Tampa, Texas.
We are willing as a family to forgo wages in order to see stability in crisis.
Let us all hope that Americans will once again realize that we must be willing to sacrifice for a long-legged goal and once again have pride in our nation.
And here's a letter 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.
I want to thank the thousands of people who have written similar letters since my speech along this building.
I want you to know how much it has meant to me to hear that most Americans will put their country's interests above personal interests in fighting the battle against inflation.
Now let us look to the future.
Because of our strong beginning, because of the determination Americans have shown to pull together during the freezes, I am confident that our burger action in stopping inflation will succeed as well.
Planning ahead, I have consulted in the past seven weeks with scores of representatives of labor and business and farms and consumers and the Congress and state and local governments.
They have been virtually unanimous in their belief that 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 breeze is over on November 13, we shall continue our program of wage and price restraints.
We began this battle against inflation for the purpose of winning.
We are going to stay in it until we do it.
I am appointing a price commission to hold down prices.
It will be made up of persons outside of government, all public members, not beholden to any special interest groups.
Our estimation will develop the Irish states will be empowered to restrain price and rent increases to the extent necessary, and to prevent windfall problems.
Its goal will be to continue to drive down the rate of inflation.
This goal, however, can only be achieved with the active cooperation of working men and businessmen, farmers and consumers, members of the Congress, and of our state local government.
That means all of us.
I'm also running a pay war to stop inflationary wage and salary increases, the kind of increases that don't really benefit the working class.
For example, in the past six years, workers have received big wage increases, yet every one of the workers knows these increases have practically all been eaten up by the rise in the cost of living.
The pay board will be made up of representatives of labor management and the public.
Both the Price Commission and the pay board will seek voluntary cooperation for business and labor, but they will be backed by the authority of law and make their decisions stable.
Their stats will be small.
Stabilization must be made to work not by an army of bureaucrats, but by an all-volunteer army of patriotic citizens in every walk of life.
Costa Living Council, which is headed by the Secretary of the Treasury, will have the power to back up the pay board and the press commission with government sanctions where necessary.
I have named Councilor Renfe to become a member of that council, and he will be the full-time director of the council operations.
Secretary Conley, chairman of the council, will be on television tomorrow, live, relative to the press conference, to answer technical questions about the new program.
Our experience over the past seven weeks proves conclusive that the vast majority of African Americans will cooperate wholeheartedly with the system of voluntary restraint.
But if there are any who try to take advantage of the patriotic cooperation of their fellow Americans, I can assure you that this government must be and will be prepared to act against them.
For that reason,
I have today, and I am this afternoon, I have today a meeting with the bipartisan leaders of the Congress, a meeting with the bipartisan leaders, legislative leaders, ask the Congress to extend for one year the Economic Stabilization Act, which gives the President the power he needs to act to stop inflation.
Holding the line against inflation means only a long time.
Consequently, I am appointing the Government Committee on Interest and Dividends to apply the orders to both these areas, led by Dr. Arthur Brink, 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 credit requirements of American fans and equitable terms, to stimulate noninflationary economic expansion.
I am confident this can be accomplished on a voluntary basis.
and safeguard our liberty, I will ask the Congress to stand by and control over interest rates and dividends.
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 fact that we cannot avoid.
All Americans will benefit from more profits.
More profits fuel the expansion that generates more jobs.
More profits means more investment that will make our goods more competitive.
More profits means more tax revenues to pay for the programs that help people in need.
That's why higher profits in the American economy will 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 excess profits, Price Commission's policy 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 the only direction for prices to go is up.
Well, the time has come for some price reductions, I acknowledge.
Let's see some prices go down.
This is not only in the public interest, but it makes good competitive business sense.
Summing up these actions to stop the rise in the cost of living, this is what we will do and what we will not do.
We will prevent some adjustments of prices and wages that fairness demands, but we will not permit inflation to flare up again.
We will concentrate on those major portions of the economy that are the 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, but we will not make controls a permanent feature of American life.
but they are no longer needed, we will get rid of them.
We are primarily in the good faith of voluntary cooperation with the American people to make this program work, but we will not let any Soviet actors escape the very enforcement of the law.
I call upon all of you tonight to live in 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 one of us.
Let us recognize, let us recognize this profound truth.
What is best for all of us is best for each one of us.
We cannot afford a business as usual attitude anywhere because fighting inflation is everybody's business.
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.
The coming year 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, the first time in 15 years, in which we can achieve our goal of prosperity in the times of peace.
It can be a year in which great progress can be made toward our goal of full employment without the inflation that robs working people of the full value of the dollars they save.
It can be a year in which the American competitive spirit is reborn as we open up new markets for our goods abroad and new careers for our workers abroad.
It can be a year in which we and our international trading partners build upon the most significant initiative in monetary affairs in 25 years.
The year in which we replace the crisis-prone system of the past with a new system in tune with the future.
It can be an era in which historic events will take place on the international scene.
Events that could affect a piece of the world in the next generation, and even in the next century.
We often hear people say, these are troubling times.
I say these are great and exciting times.
We are at the threshold of a great new year, an age of movement and of challenge and of change.
We have an unparalleled opportunity to create a better world for ourselves and for our children.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, to make the most of that opportunity, to join in a great common effort to stop the question and to create a new prosperity in the world of peace.