President Clinton traveled the week of July 4 to areas of the nation that continues to have the most stubborn pockets of poverty in the nation. T hose areas included Annville, KY/Hazard, KY (Appalachia); Clarksdale, MS; East St. Louis, IL; Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, SD: Phoenix, AZ; and, Los Angeles/Anaheim, CA. Leading a bipartisan delegation of corporate CEOs, Congressional members and Cabinet Secretaries, the President is hoping that the private sector will make more investments in what is being called "untapped markets."

During the visit to East St. Louis, HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo joined President Clinton in delivering a $3 million Empowerment Zone grant to East St. Louis, IL, St. Louis, MO; Wellston, MO, and St. Louis County, MO to help revitalize some of the poorest neighborhoods in the communities. The communities had been previously named a Regional Urban Empowerment Zone in January.

In Phoenix, the President visited two businesses in the South Phoenix Enterprise Community the are creating jobs with the assistance of HUD. The first was Chicanos Por La Causa (CPLC), a small business incubator in South Phoenix that received $140,000 in HUD Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding. The other business was La Canasta Mexican Foods, Inc., a female owned, minority restaurant and tortilla factory. La Canasta used $26, 000 in HUD and private funds to resurface a 17,000 square-foot parking lot, install two signs, and paint two of its buildings.

On July 6, during the New Markets tour, President Clinton released a HUD report showing that America’s inner city neighborhoods – with $331 billion in annual retail purchasing power – hold major economic potential for retail business growth. The report is titled New Markets: The Untapped Retail Buying Power in America’s Inner Cities. It concludes that retailers can find major profit-making opportunities in low- and moderate-income inner city neighborhoods, which it calls "undiscovered territories for many businesses."