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the Conservative Government bring a different philosophical approach to the issues and in certain important respects our I want to policies on them are correspondingly distinctive. talk about them today.
4 Two years ago while I was in Opposition I made a speech in London on setting out what I called a Conservative view of trade. I have looked back at what I said then. I am pleased to find that, after 8 months of practical experience in Office of the multiplicity of problems which arise each day that the main objectives which I established then are now in practice within
my Department.
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5 It is hardly necessary, in Hong Kong of all places, for me to preach the virtues of international trade. You are a trading community in a more complete sense than almost any other country in the world. Your exports are equal in value to 80% of your national product. The UK stake in international trade is not as dramatic as yours, but it is still fundamental. Nearly 30 per cent of our GNP is earned by sales in world markets. Hardly less than you can we afford to see a downturn in world trade. We are both bound, therefore, to look with anxiety at. the dangers that today beset world trade, the growing recession, the pressures for restriction and for increasing fragmentation, the growth of new devices of protection, in
I said the form of internal subsidies, to replace the old. two years ago that the term "Trade War" is back in our vocabulary.
I am afraid it remains so.
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One of the unfortunate factors perhaps a more difficult
fact of life for us than you is that the benefits of internation
trade are less visible than its problems. We can all seo the jobs lost when a factory closes because it cannot compete with imports, We cannot so easily identify the jobs created by exports.
We
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