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Hong Kong Texilles Would OK Quotas, If-
HONG KONG.
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Hong Kong Would OK Quotas, If.
If the United States applies a little more pressure, textile manufacturers here will have to bow and accept a quotas arrangement on shipments to the United States some of them admit.
"Ultimately, we would not be in a position to say no,” says C. T. Mok, who heads John Cowie & Co.
If there have to be restrictions, textile men reason fatalistically, then quotas based on 1968 levels would be acceptable in woolen knitwear anyway.
With $85.5 million worth of wool knits sold to the United States last year manufacturers were able to reap the benefit of a 53 per cent increase in business over the year before.
"It was our best year to date," "says C. T. Mok. "But I think the boom is over now. We're already beginning to feel the pinch, just as we did with our sales to West Ger- many a few years back."
Frank Jen of Ziang Kong Knitting comments further. See HONG KONG, P. 28, Seo, 1
DAILY NEWS Recues
13/6/
Continued from P. 1, This Sec. "People here are beginning to say privately that if there have to be quotas then let's have them applied quickly. At least that way we can ensure our part of the United States market and stop South Korea from taking any more of our trade."
But that's the short-term view of course, he adds quickly. "There's no way of knowing what new products will be developed in these sectors in the future, and we don't want to have iron- clad restrictions placed on them already."
Hong Kong's textile men will keep a close watch on the out- come of Japanese Premier Sato's talks with President Nixon scheduled next week.
Faced with the same prospect of voluntary restraints on man- made and woolen goods as the Japanese who have turned the quota issue into a political bar- gaining ground, Hong Kong tex- tile men are playing possum for the moment.
"We can hardly "use the same tactics as Japan has, says one top industry spokesman, "but until we hear what happens at both the Sato talks in Wash- ington and the GATT talks in Geneva, it is hard for us to assess how we stand."
When U. S. Secretary of Com- merce Maurice Stans visited Hong Kong on his shuttle tour around the East a few months ago textile men met his proposals with a firm "no."
Since then there has not ex- actly been a change of heart, but the situation is now viewed in what could be termed a more realistic fashion.
But T. K. Ann, the managing director of Soco Textiles, still speaks for many when he says: “We are restricted already with our exports of cotton goods. How can we sit by now and voluntarily agree to further quotas in sec- tions of our industry which are not yet fully developed? We have to export to live."
Manufacturers in Hong Kong are not generally sympathetic to the United States stand.
As one told DNR, "With all the flexibility in the world how can we listen with one ear to vocies about the United States being an advocate of free trade, and have to grapple with their proposals of restrictions on the other?"
-JOAN VERTIGAN