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products covered, the more likely was it that such
injury could be proved. This discussion came at the end of the day and was left inconclusive.
7. There was some discussion about the specific case of shirts where the Americans produced figures which indicated that while in some items production was down, it was up in others leaving the overall shirt production figures much the same, i.e. although imports have been increasing, domestic production has not been cut back.
8.
There was no agreement to have further talks and Mr. Stewart's impression was that the Americans got the sort of response they expected and that their main objective is to hammer away at the Japanese position at the meetings next month.
9. Mr. Stewart said that relations with the Hong Kong delegation were friendly and that Mr. Jordan had commented that the US approach to this problem was just about the worst possible solution from Hong Kong's point of view and that Hong Kong and Britain were at one over this.
10. Mr. Stewart also spoke about possible follow up action to the suggestion made by the EEC delegate that there might be some form of fact finding exercise under the GATT about the whole problem of imports of non cotton textiles. This idea was given a welcome by Sir E. Melville (Geneva telegram No. 543 paragraph 4) and it might be that if we got together with other Heads of delegation to foster the idea of a GATT study, without crystallising the issue at this stage we might succeed in heading off extreme American pressure on the Japanese at least for the purposes of the US/Japanese summit meetings. After those meetings the Americans would have less opportunity to pressurise the Japanese who so far have remained commendably firm and with whom apparently our delegation had good relations in Geneva.
11.
I said that we had all along appreciated that at some stage there might be a need to find some face saving device for the Americans. The question was how far we had to go in order to do this. The danger of a Working Party whose Terms of Reference asked for recommendations about what needed to be done was that we might get an answer we did not like. If we had to go along with a GATT exercise it seemed to me that at least in the first instance there would be advantage in restricting this to a fact finding task. The question of what needed to be done about any problem which emerged could be a much longer term exercise.
Juritehead
(G.S. Whitehead)
14 October 1969