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He pointed out that in a rapidly globalising economy, anti-dumping was already something of an anachronism, but its potential as an instrument of trade harassment and protection remained enormous.
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"The European Union has recognised this internally, and now relies on competition policy to police anti-competitive behaviour among member states. Australia and New Zealand have done the same in their own arrangement. In NAFTA (North America Free Trade Agreement) the question has yet to be resolved," he noted.
"We are convinced that EU and Australia and New Zealand have made the right decision and that the rest of the world should ultimately follow suit."
On investment, Mr Miller said as local companies continued to invest abroad, Hong Kong had an increasing interest in securing a similar degree of freedom and openness in investment regimes elsewhere as here.
"This will be good for trade because trade follows investment. Hence our support for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation's (APEC) investment code concluded at Bogor last year," he added.
As regards other areas such as the environment and labour standards, Mr Miller said Hong Kong's interests lay in preventing attempts to "improve" the system in any way which would sanction the use of trade restraints to persuade other countries to accept policies and standards in areas not related to trade.
"This is not because we do not regard improvements in these areas as important. On the contrary, we do and our own records bear testimony to this. However, we do not believe that trade sanctions should be used to persuade people to accept such standards when quite clearly economic progress is a pre-condition for improvement," he said.
"Many of the advocates of such a linkage are purely protectionists. They argue that economic progress in the East and South can only be achieved at the expense of prosperity and employment in the West and North.
"This is economic nonsense. It must be recognised as such and we were therefore very pleased to see the G-7 pointing unequivocally in the Halifax communique at domestic policies and labour market rigidities as the real cause of systemic unemployment.
"Nevertheless you should expect to hear Hong Kong continuing to argue this point with both passion and persistence."
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