Mr Major’s Comments on the US and UK Economies – 4 April 1995

Below is the text of Mr Major’s comments on the US and UK economies, made on 4th April 1995.

QUESTION:

[Mr Major was asked about the US and UK economies]

PRIME MINISTER:

I think if you look around the world, you will find most people in government dealing at the tail end of a recession having made difficult decisions in order to get their countries out of the recession in good order but those decisions hurt. If you found someone who was very popular in one of the western democracies, then I suspect you would have found somebody who hadn’t taken the decisions that were necessary so I think that is the first point I would make.

The second point about the United Kingdom is this: we are a very outward-looking nation, we are a free-trading nation. We have huge interests with and in the United States, we are the largest investor by far in the United States, we have well over 100 billion dollars invested in the United States; the United States are the biggest investors with us so there is a huge relationship there, but similarly, we have massive investments in western Europe, in Asia and elsewhere so we are very concerned about free trade. We require a global foreign policy, we realise that in many cases it is desirable to pool the resources we have, to discuss with the United States and others what a joint approach may be and those were the sort of issues we were examining at the conference you referred to.