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and clothing items dropped by atout 30% compared with the same
period in 1976; and for the UK even 1976 was not a good year in
terms of quantity our exports of restrained items to the UK
dropped by about 1 in volume. In the first four months of 1977..
our exports of restrained textiles and clothing items to the REC
as a whole also dropped by about 30%. In this period, the quantity
of our exports of restrained textiles end clothing items to the
USA increased only marginally by 1. The prognosis for 1977 looks
bad on the basis of these 1977 export figures; and the future
looks even bleaker when we read the news from Geneva and Brussels.
11. Our request is not for special treatment for our exports
to the l or the BBC. We have sought such treatment and never
will. We have always competed in our overseas markets with other
suppliers on the basis of fair competition. We intend to continue
to compete fairly for our share of the markets of the world. We
are not ashamed of our past achievements and have no guilty
conscience over what the EEC has both publicly and in private
referred to as our predominant share of the Community market,
We think it is unfair to attack Hong Kong's position or to sumrest
that if Hong Kong was restrained more severely, then other
developing countries could benefit at our expense.
This concept
of doubly penalising the successful to win political credit with
the less successful seems to us basically dishonest. We feel that
if the objective of the developed countries is really to assist
the less developed among the developing countries, then the
textiles and clothing exports of these ceveloping countries ought
to be allowed to grow, if they can, in competition with establisn-
ed suppliers. It is not reasonable to say that they should first
be placed under restraint and then allowed artificially induced
growth at the expense of Hong Kong.
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