CONFIDENTIAL
Draft Insertion for
Prime Minister's Brief
We have been given to understand that the United States' willingness to include Hong Kong in their preference scheme may depend on an assurance of similar inclusion by the EEC and Japan in their schemes. We have good hopes that the EEC will offer Hong Kong treatment broadly similar to the U.S. scheme. The case of Japan is different. Although the Japanese do not appear to have reached a final decision, we expect their decision to be dictated more by their fear of Hong Kong as a competitor in third markets than by a dispassionate assessment of the merits of the case. We therefore hope that the United States will agree that the inclusion of Hong Kong in the schemes of Britain and the EEC (which take nearly eight times more of Hong Kong's exports than Japan) would enable the United States safely to include Hong Kong to the same extent in her own scheme.
CONFIDENTIAL
12
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