3
it unreasonable, however, and will actively resist any
suggestion that the positions we have established in certain major markets should be eroded on the dubious pretext that
it is necessary to reduce or contain rigidly the growth prospects for Hong Kong and other major suppliers in order to make room for newcomers. That would mean, in effect, that the importing country concerned would be requiring us not merely to help solve its problems but to actually take some of them over.
A refinement on the suggestion, to which Mr. Tien has referred, that export opportunities for major suppliers be reduced, has been the widely touted idea that quota ceilings should move from year to year in inverse ratio to the degree of import penetration. Apart from the obvious flaw in this reasoning, which is that import penetration by itself is no measure of damage to domestic producers, especially if they are substantial exporters, there is an even more serious error inherent in such a concept. Let us take, for example, the EEC, where the proponents of these ideas have recently been most vocal. Only two of the top five suppliers of textiles to the EEC market, Hong Kong and the Republic - of Korea, are subject to restraints. The other three are the United States, Austria and Switzerland. I find it difficult to detect any logic in the concept that if total import penetration increased as a result of unrestricted growth in trade from these three countries, then the growth rate of restrained exports from Hong Kong and Korea should be reduced.
/We