Reagan Urges Joint Effort on Economic Goals

President Reagan called today for “a joint venture” between the United States and other industrialized democracies to strengthen economic policy coordination, open more markets and ease the debt burden of poorer nations.

Previewing the points he will push at the seven-nation economic summit commencing Sunday in Toronto, Reagan also said that finding “a common offensive” against money laundering and drug trafficking is of utmost importance.

In a speech prepared for the Atlantic Council, a group that makes policy recommendations on the development of democracies around the world, the President also said there should be greater efforts to restore the economies of the Philippines and Afghanistan.

U.S. Pattern Followed

Reagan used much of his speech to extol the virtues of his own economic policy of lowering tax rates, easing government regulation and otherwise encouraging U.S. business investment, and said he believes that many of the other industrialized democracies have begun to follow the U.S. pattern.

“This new consensus (on economic growth strategy) has not only brought the economies of America, Britain, Canada and so many other countries roaring back,” he said, “it also has opened the way for coordination of economic policy among the summit countries that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.”

Reagan will join the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan at the economic summit in Toronto from Sunday through June 21.