TNAG-0607-FCO40-755-Monitoring-progress-made-on-planning-papers-on-Hong-Kong-1977 — Page 118

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these the quotas would be cut back below the 1976 level of trade. It is

RA

of course almost unprecedented to demand a roll-back of quota at all,

and this discrimination against Hong Kong and the other principal suppliers

for the 8 items would be as damaging as the precedent is dangerous.

Seven of these items affect Hong Kong and account for 57% of our textile

exports to the EEC. While the effect of the Community's ideas might not

reduce our present level of textile trade with the EEC in these items,

which is depressed, they would block the possibility of recovery of our

exports once business in the EEC picks up again. In other words the

practical effect for these items would be to nail us down to somewhere near

the present depressed level of trade. The loss of trade below the 1976

level envisaged by the Commission would be about $480 M., but the loss

in trade possibilities in the EEC could be over $1,000 M.

15.

While I understand the pressures generated by a high level of

imports, by unemployment and politics, under which the EEC Lave evolved

these ideas, their application to Hong Kong is as lacking in equity as in

logical statistical basis. Hong Kong has not been the culprit, if that is

the right word, in surge of imports into Europe in the last two years; this

has come from other countries. Indeed, imports from Hong Kong of these items

since 1975 have significantly declined. While one might understand the

EEC's wish to give their own industry a respite through stabilising

imports, their proposal to create a pool of quota for so-called 'newcomers'

and countries with preferential arrangements, and to do so at the

expense of Hong Kong and a few other established suppliers, is grossly

discriminatory, whether it applies to one principal supplier or to three:

it would mean that the EEC was assisting other countries not at its own

expense, but at ours. It is particularly unreasonable to make a special

target of Hong Kong, which not only is more dependent on textile exports

than any other community, but has an excellent record of agreeing to and

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