CONFIDENTIAL
industry where restraints are sought, but this can well
remain a unilateral statement.
13. As for an overall study of world textile prospects and problems, this is the kind of action in the GATT to which the EEC's earlier proposal of a "study" in the GATT looked forward. At one time this seemed a useful way of running the whole exercise into the sand. In present circumstances it would be difficult to avoid the impression that something like the extension of the L.T.A. to non-cotton textiles was being prepared for. We should therefore not support this course at present, though it may still be worth having in reserve as a stalling device if action by the U.S. on a limited range of items in fact provokes pressure for some wider move in GATT which cannot be contained.
14. Apart from discussing action on items where a presentable injury case could be offered, Trezise will wish to discuss the U.3. desire for an overall ceiling (though it has been made clear that we cannot accept this). He may argue that if certain sectors are restricted, manufacturers in the Asiatic) Ascan
countries can quickly switch production to other sectors where similar difficulties for the U.S. industry would soon emerge.
15. There is some force in this argument, but the issue can only be discussed with reference to an actual "threat" of
serious injury to domestic producers, in terms of Article XIX. Thus switches of production may be easy between, say, women's sweaters and men's sweaters; and on this basis if actual injury were occurring in women's sweaters one might agree that the threat of it existed in men's sweaters, justifying some action covering them also. But production is not so easily switched throughout the range of textiles, and if this argument in favour of an overall ceiling were accepted, it would amount to a drastic revision of Article XlX. This approves restric- tions only on imports of "particular products", which are by implication narrower in range than the domestic products whose market is threatened. (The phrase "such product" in respect of which an obligation may be suspended, is clearly narrower
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