TNAG-0143-FCO40-179-Exports-of-textiles-to-United-States-of-America-1969 — Page 104

R&PA American File.

3

Alan Bullock asked him if Moscow was not more

concerned about China than Europe nowadays. No,

No, said

Nixon, China was a backyard concern, Europe was "the blue chip" for both the US and Russia.

A

ang

RÉCEIVED IN ARCHIVES No.31

24 MAR 1969

1HKK6/306/1

We had now gone 40 minutes and Kissinger was looking restive: only 4 or 5 people had had a chance to open their mouths. Nixon turned to economic questions. US becoming increasingly protectionist. Growing demand for quotas especially steel and textiles. He had real problems here. Davies of C.B.I. intervened to deplore control of external investment, and Nixon said that

for our private information he intended to remove these controls because they were ineffective and did long term

harm. Bankers' eyebrows shot up. Nixon showed more assurance when talking of trade matters than when talking of monetary ones. Weinstock urged Nixon to remove the COLOM restrictions as obsolete, and the President said this was being given sympathetic consideration Weinstock also said that balance of payments problems were much more restrictive of trade than quotas could be, to which Nixon said maybe, but the simplest way to correct the

American imbalance would be to deflate the economy and thus reduce imports, which was unthinkable because so much of international security depended on a buoyant American economy. No sign that he was thinking of any major initia-

tive in monetary field.

By now it was 5.30 p.m. and an enormous Negro

Colonel entered to remind the President that his time was

up. I nudged Mark Bonham-Carter to say it would be a great pity if the young were not heard from: Mark kicked Henry smartly on the shins, who mumbled into Nixon's ear. So Nixon sent the Colonel away and launched into a brill- iant four minute exposé about the generation gap, using every in sociological phrase there is, "participation", "Outer directed", "transnational society", "quality not

quantity", etc. To this Trevor Fisk, the President of the N.U., rose gallantly, saying that a lot of student protest was bunk, but that the search for a cause, for a new sense of values, was real and must be taken seriously: he said that American students in Europe were doing a lot of damage to US prestige since they were mostly draft-dodgers. But most American students were more provincial than their European counterparts, and the more they got out in the world the better. American students were the reverse of

41