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The imbalance in direct trading between us continues to widen, against the trend of your trade world-wide. It is now
too great. It has to be corrected. It will not be easy because I understand that you are running a substantial global deficit
at the present time. But to put that in perspective, it is no
larger in terms of your total GNP than our own global deficit.
The choice is therefore twofold. Either we restrict the natural
propensity of our two nations to co-operate much more fully
with each other and if that happened everyone would be the
loser; or we reduce the imbalance. Of course, we will continue
the UK effort to increase direct trade but this is not enough.
We must look much more to investment by Japan in the United
Kingdom of much more technology and skill. Such joint ventures
could supply not only our large home market but, more importantly,
looking to the EEC as a whole, the largest single open domestic
market in the world.
11 Japan and the UK are established trading partners. We
accept and value your goods as you do ours. But the way forward
in our trading relations is through sharing in the development
and exploitation in our two countries of the technology and
experience in which we each both excel.
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