:
C.
to 40% it knew there would be subsequent withdrawals bringing the weighted average down below this figure.
The offers made by the three major participants in the negotiations (the US, the Community and Japan) are now being evaluated by their trading partners. The Community offer on industrial tariffs is a very short one consisting of a statement of the Community's
·willingness, subject to reciprocity, to reduce its tariffs according to the Swiss harmonising formula
over the whole of its industrial tariffs. The
Americans and Japanese in contrast have submitted detailed documents specifying the precise tariff rates offered amounting in many cases to the application of the Swiss formula to the existing tariff rate but in many cases to the application of either a stiffer or a slighter cut (or none at all) in the tariff in question. The evaluation of the effects of these two offers on Community exporters will take until late in February and the Department of Trade has been concerned to ensure that British interests are adequately taken
into account in this evaluation.
2.
e.
There has been acceptance in principle by the main parties to the negotiations of codes on government procurement, standards, customs valuation and subsidies and countervailing. The documents embodying this agreement are either written in very general language or are full of square brackets: there remain major differences of emphasis among the major parties on all
or most of the points.
Discussion on the meat and dairy sectors continue in MTN sub groups and discussion on grains is being carried a stage further with the convening in Geneva of an International Grains Conference on 13 February. In addition, as forecast in the earlier note, offers concerning tariff and non tariff barriers on agricultura products were made by the Community and other
participants in the course of January, and these, like
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