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SECURITY CLASSIFICATION
Top Secret.
Secret.
Confidential.
Restricted.
Unclassified.
PRIVACY MARKING
In Confidence
cc to other members of EQ
Sir John Hunt
Cabinet Office
LETTER
DRAFT
To: Secretary of State for
Industry
Type 1 +
FROM
Mr Hattersley
Telephone No. Ext.
Department
I have read with interest your letter of
13 December to Peter Shore and the latter's letter
of 23 December to you about the question of introduc-
ing restraints on imports of certain knitwear
products from Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.
Like Peter Shore, I was unhappy about your earlier proposals on knitwear (set out in your paper EQ(74) 46 of
November) on the grounds that
the case for restraints seemed weak and because I
was anxious to avoid difficulties with our traditional
Asian suppliers, in particular Hong Kong.
Clearly, however, a compromise of some kind vas
necessary and I can agree to go along with the more
selective approach which you propose in your letter
of 13 December. I hope that the points made in
Peter Shore's letter of 23 December can be sorted out
without too much difficulty
I recognise that there is growing concern within
our own knitwear industry about imports of low cost
knitwear and that even if the case for restraints at
the moment is questionable it could well be that
before long a fairly good case could be made out.
It would be most unfortunate if by refusing to go
along with Community-wide restraints on some knitwear
items now we were to miss the bus later on regarding
the application of the burden-sharing formula to this
1
/sector