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We recently signed export deals with India and China that will support more than 250,000 jobs here in the United States. We finalized a trade agreement with South Korea that will support at least 70,000 American jobs. And by the way, it’s a deal that has unprecedented support from business and labor, Democrats and Republicans. That’s the kind of deal that I will be looking for as we pursue trade agreements with Panama and Colombia, as we work to bring Russia into the international trading system. Those are going to be our top priorities because we believe Americans have the best products and the best businesses, and if we’re out there selling and we’re out there hustling, there’s no reason why we can’t do a lot better than we’re doing right now when it comes to our exports.

Now, another barrier government can remove — and I hear a lot about this from many of you — is a burdensome（繁重的） corporate tax code with one of the highest rates in the world. You know how it goes: because of various loopholes（漏洞） and carve-outs that have built up over the years, some industries pay an average rate that is four or five times higher than others. Companies are taxed heavily for making investments with equity, yet the tax code actually pays companies to invest using leverage. As a result, you’ve got too many companies ending up making decisions based on what their tax director says instead of what their engineer designs or what their factories produce. And that puts our entire economy at a disadvantage. We need something smarter, something simpler, something fairer. That’s why I want to lower the corporate rate and eliminate these loopholes to pay for it, so that it doesn’t add a dime to our deficit. And I’m asking for your help in this fight. I think it can be done.

Which brings me to the last barriers we’re trying to remove, and those are outdated（过时的） and unnecessary regulations. I’ve ordered a government-wide review, and if there are rules on the books that are needlessly stifling job creation and economic growth, we will fix them.

Already we’re dramatically cutting down on the paperwork that saddles businesses with huge administrative costs. We’re improving the way FDA evaluates things like medical devices, to get innovative and lifesaving treatments to market faster. And the EPA, based on the need for further scientific analysis, delayed the greenhouse gas permitting rules for biomass（生物量） .

I’ve also ordered agencies to find ways to make regulations more flexible for small businesses. And we’ve turned a tangle of fuel economy regulations and pending lawsuits into a single standard that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil, save consumers money at the pump and give car companies the certainty that they need — all negotiated by the various stakeholders without the need for congressional legislation.

But ultimately, winning the future is not just about what the government can do for you to succeed. It’s also about what you can do to help America succeed.

So we were just talking about regulations. Even as we eliminate burdensome regulations, America’s businesses have a responsibility as well to recognize that there are some basic safeguards, some basic standards that are necessary to protect the American people from harm or exploitation. Not every regulation is bad. Not every regulation is burdensome on business. A lot of the regulations that are out there are things that all of us welcome in our lives.

Few of us would want to live in a society without rules that keep our air and water clean; that give consumers the confidence to do everything from investing in financial markets to buying groceries. And the fact is, when standards like these have been proposed in the past, opponents have often warned that they would be an assault on business and free enterprise. We can look at the history in this country. Early drug companies argued the bill creating the FDA would “practically destroy the sale of … remedies in the United States.” That didn’t happen. Auto executives predicted that having to install seatbelts would bring the downfall of their industry. It didn’t happen. The President of the American Bar Association denounced child labor laws as “a communistic effort to nationalize children.” That’s a quote.

None of these things came to pass. In fact, companies adapt and standards often spark competition and innovation. I was travelling when I went up to Penn State to look at some clean energy hubs that have been set up. I was with Steve Chu, my Secretary of Energy. And he won a Nobel Prize in physics, so when you’re in conversations with him you catch about one out of every four things he says. (Laughter.)

But he started talking about energy efficiency and about refrigerators（冰箱） , and he pointed out that the government set modest targets a couple decades ago to start increasing efficiency over time. They were well thought through; they weren’t radical. Companies competed to hit these markers. And they hit them every time, and then exceeded them. And as a result, a typical fridge now costs half as much and uses a quarter of the energy that it once did — and you don’t have to defrost, chipping at that stuff — (laughter) — and then putting the warm water inside the freezer and all that stuff. It saves families and businesses billions of dollars.

So regulations didn’t destroy the industry; it enhanced it and it made our lives better — if they’re smart, if they’re well designed. And that’s our goal, is to work with you to think through how do we design necessary regulations in a smart way and get rid of regulations that have outlived their usefulness, or don’t work.

I also have to point out the perils（事故，风险） of too much regulation are also matched by the dangers of too little. And we saw that in the financial crisis, where the absence of sound rules of the road, that wasn’t good for business. Even if you weren’t in the financial sector it wasn’t good for business. And that’s why, with the help of Paul Volcker, who is here today, we passed a set of common-sense reforms.

The same can be said of health insurance reform. We simply could not continue to accept a status quo（现状） that’s made our entire economy less competitive, as we’ve paid more per person for health care than any other nation on Earth. Nobody is even close. And we couldn’t accept a broken system where insurance companies could drop people because they got sick, or families went into bankruptcy because of medical bills.