:
Col
CONFIDENTIAL
1. INTERNATIONAL TRADE IN TEXTILES
The Committee considered a memorandum by the Board of Trade (PC0(69) 17) about the line to be taken by the United Kingdom Delegation in the October negotiations on a possible further renewal of the Long Term Arrangement for cotton textiles (LTA) and its possible extension to cover non-cotton textiles.
THE CHAIRMAN said that the paper suggested our opening position should be that we would like to see the LTA ended when it expired on 30th September 1970 and that we should resist any proposal by
This the United States for its extension to non-cotton textiles.
was in line with our long term commercial policy of moving away from quotas towards tariffs. The proposal for a Working Party to review the position of trade in textiles in relation to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and to recommend the best way of dealing with it should be brought into play only when it was clear that the United States' attempt to extend the scope of the ITA had feilod. The paper should perhaps have brought out more clearly that the proposel was not for a review of the working and possible use of Article XIX of the GAIT alone, but for a study of a possible internationally-agreed framework for trade in taxtiles with strictly defined criteria for the imposition of import restrictions. There
was,
however, some risk that other countries might wish to apply a more workable Article XIX to products other than textiles. Alternatively, we might allow bilateral restraint arrangements to continue to develop but here the danger was that they would proliferate and lead to unwelcome and excessive restriction of trade. Finally the paper recommended that, because a Working Party would take some time to report and because many other countries would wish to see the LTA expanded, we should be prepared to accept a limited extension, preferably until the beginning of 1972 when our tariff policy for textiles came into force.
-1-
CONFIDENTIAL