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have to remain on the list to get as big an increase in the ceilings or indicative ceilings as he can. Then he has in mind that the butoirs for individual developing countries which have shown themselves to be highly competitive should be reduced to 10%. How is one to determine which of the beneficiaries are highly competitive and which are not? He says this can readily be done by virtue of the experience of the Communities with the operation of their scheme to date. If an individual beneficiary has "fallen foul" of the butoirs on a particular product in either one or two previous years, this could be taken as an indication that it was in the highly competitive category. It would, therefore, be given a butoir of only 10% for that product in the 1975 scheme. Tran believes that if he can sell this "plan" to the member states it should be possible at the same time to persuade them that Hong Kong should no longer be excluded from the benefit of preferential treatment on textiles and footwear. I asked him whether he thought that such an arrangement would be saleable in Paris. He seemed to think that it would provided we gave every possible support to Tran's ideas at all stages of the operation.
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If after this general outline of Tran's ideas has been studied in the DTI, you would like me to seek any further elucidation, please let me know.
Your even.
Bob Goldswit
R Goldsmith
Copy to P S Preston Esq DTI, and A Stuart Esq, HKIOD FCO
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