By the President of the United States

of America

A Proclamation

International trade is an important means of furthering America's friendly international relations and of bettering the lives of all Americans.

Trade stimulates competition, stirs our creative energies, rewards individual initiative and increases national productivity. Among nations, it speeds the exchange of new ideas and technology.

As products made in this country compete successfully in world markets, we contibute to the strength and stability of our dollar, the expansion of our industry and fuller employment of our labor force.

For these reasons, the United States remains firmly committed to an active world trade role in the context of an increasingly interrelated international economy. A reciprocal spirit of world cooperation, permitting fair trade and investment between our country and the rest of the world, is indispensable to all of us.

Now, Therefore, I, Ronald Reagan, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim the week beginning May 17, 1981, as World Trade Week, and I urge the people of the United States to cooperate in observing that week with activities that promote the importance of trade to our national well-being at home and abroad.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this third day of March in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and eighty-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fifth.

Ronald Reagan

[Filed with the Office of the Federal Register, 2:35 p.m., March 4, 1981]

Note: The text of the proclamation was released by the Office of the Press Secretary on March 4.