J
CONFIDENTIAL
United States Position
This
9. There was also some talk about the U.S. position. Mr. Goldsmith said
that all American officials concerned with the preferences issue were
playing their cards very close to their chest and he had been able to obtain
very little, if any, information on what their intentions were. However,
his guess would be that the Americans would adopt an orthodox safeguards
procedure rather than introduce duty quotas, that their exceptions list would
be a fairly long one and that they would not grant duty free entry to
developing countries, but only a partial cut, perhaps of the order of 50%
in most cases, although this might be different with some products.
was, of course, only a guess. Tran replied that the Community had also
not found out much about the american position. His guess was that one of
the reasons for this was that they were still in a very fluid position.
added that he would be surprised if, when it came to the crunch, the
Americans were able to meet the 1 March deadline. Mr. Goldsmith explained
that the fact that in the two largest import markets, the EC and the U.S.,
the preferential systems finally adopted were likely to be so different would
make it difficult for the U.K. to assess the position from the point of view
of burden-sharing. If it turned out that the U.K. had to adjust its
position in the light of burden-sharing, a decision would need to be taken
as to whether this should be done by moving in the direction of duty free
quotas a la Community or tariff cuts which would give less than duty free
entry in line with the Americans.
He
U.K. Mission,
Geneva.
24 January, 1969
(D.J.C. Jones)
: