TUESDAY, MAY 4, 1993
39
I feel that very strongly in Hong Kong where
textiles are extremely important to us. I feel that very
strongly in Hong Kong where I can speak for one of the very few communities where there aren't any tariffs at
all. So, to borrow a phrase, we, as it were, put our
money where our mouth is.
I worry about the pressures for protectionism
around the world. Pressures in Europe, pressures in the
agricultural sector, the pressures which try to add some
respectability to the argument by pretending that the only
way we can protect our welfare standards, our community
provision, is by shutting out the goods from other
communities where welfare standards may not be so high.
I worry about all those arguments and think that
if we allow ourselves to drift down that road, we'll all
rue the day because it will have calamitous consequences
for our economic development and economic growth, I do
think that free trade is one of those issues where there
are dangers as soon as you move away from an assertion of
principle, and I hope we can avoid such a move.
MR. BERGER: Forty years ago, the Democrats were
labelled with the charge that they had lost China to
communist oppression. Don't your proposals have a British
domestic political purpose? Aren't they really designed
to protect the Conservative Party from the post-1997
charge that they lost Hong Kong to communist oppression?
/GOVERNOR PATTEN: