Free-Market Stand Stressed by President

President Reagan said Saturday that he will attend his eighth and last economic summit session determined to work with other leaders of the world’s major industrial democracies to ensure the continuation of economic policies promoted by his Administration.

Delivering his weekly radio talk from the Oval Office, Reagan said that his Administration’s policies of reducing taxes, cutting government regulation, prying open international markets and “letting the private sector lead the way to economic recovery” had overcome the economic stagnation that prevailed when he took office.

“But our own prosperity is only part of our achievement,” Reagan said. “We have also led the world toward a remarkable consensus that economic freedom, not state planning and intervention, holds the key to growth and development.”

The President went on to predict that he and the six other national leaders who will meet today in Toronto “are going to work together to make sure that this great venture to progress continues.”

“That means further opening the international marketplace and increasing the coordination of our policies,” Reagan said. “That means bringing the newly industrialized countries into the full and mature place in the world trading system that they have earned.”

Reagan said the leaders would deal with an agenda that will include “the rebuilding of Afghanistan and the Philippines, international debt and agricultural subsidies.” But such cooperation also means working together to end “one type of trade: illegal drug trafficking,” he said. American policies have been followed by developing nations, as well as by the economically developed industrial democracies represented at the yearly summit sessions, Reagan said.

“From India to Argentina, from Africa to China and even in the Soviet Union, the shackles of state economic domination are beginning to loosen,” he said. “So in winning this battle of ideas, we’re helping to enrich and liberate the working people of the entire world.”