TNAG-0938-FCO40-1157-Visit-of-John-Nott--Secretary-of-State-for-Trade--to-Hong-Ko-1980 — Page 187

• shes na dhaham's timezone" innan.

SPEECH BY THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR TRADE TO THE HONE KONG GENERAL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, MONDAY 28 JANUARY 1980

Some-one asked me the other day whether the new Conservative

Government had a trade policy. I thought it was a very good question. I think the questioner was not really enquiring whether we have a policy towards say export credit, the GATT, UNCTAD or the import of ladies' hats from Brazil; he was simply noting the absence of a published (theoretical) framework for

trade policy, since the Conservatives took possession of the

glasshouse at Number 1 Victoria Street. And indeed it would

be correct to say that there has been a lack of weighty academic

pronouncements by the new Government on trade policy of the kind

so admirably orchestrated by my predecessor, Mr Edmund Dell.

2 But I must tell you that this does not embarrass me. Of

course it would be nice to fit each aspect of trade activity into a neat, consistent, intellectually respectable pattern which excited undergraduates and leader writers in the press but, alas, the only consistent, coherent, and certain thing about world trade is its unpredictability. I therefore see nothing wrong in a relatively pragmatic approach to trade

problems since the imposition of a preconceived doctrine on a constantly moving, highly politicised series of world economic events would be more likely to lead to the wrong actions rather than the right ones.

3

Fortunately unlike internal economic policy, trade policy has to a considerable extent been a bipartisan matter in the UK since the War. There was much that I approved at the time in the Labour Administration's approach, notably their support for GATT MTNS and the maintenance of the open trading system, and Mr Dell's resistance to pressure from within his own ranks

for a swing into protectionism.

as well as outside

-

-

Nevertheless

1