6
administering restraints here the need for them has been proved.
16.
I
Stabilisation" would be bad enough, but those discriminatory
ideas seem to me to take the whole international textile trading system
dangerously near the brink of a progressive slide into protectionis, although
the Commission profess that this is precisely what they wish to avoid.
have of course said all this and much else besides, as forcefully as I
know how, in London and Brussels and we must now leave it to our negotiators.
But I think we should realise they will have an exceptionally difficult task.
In this situation we look to the United Kingdom, as a member of the EEC
but also responsible for Hong Kong's welfare, to resist discrimination
against Hong Kong in the way I have described. We recognise the difficulties
they face over unemployment in the textile industry but their demonstrated
needs for protection can of course be met by continuation of restraints on
our exports. But the discriminatory part of the EEC's proposals is not
designed to protect domestic industry so much as to re-distribute trade by
giving a large part of the principal suppliers' oxisting trade to other
exporting countries.
17
While we will watch the course of the negotiations with acute
anxiety, should not be carried away by the rama or indignation of the
moment into believing that Hong Kong's economic future, or even Hong Kong's
textile industry as a whole, are immediately at stake. We could suffer a
blow, perhaps even a heavy blow, but certainly not a mortal one. At the
worst it will confront us with a serious challenge. If so we will have no
alternative but to meet it in our usual way - with realism, stability,
ingenuity and hard work - though it is ironic that the EC pronosals anpcar
designed to favour countries in which those virtues are not so evident as
in Hong Kong.
18.
Whatever the outcome of these particular negotiations much will
depend on the general state of world economic activity and trae in 1978,
since buoyant consitions could help us through what might otherwise be a
/difficult...