ENG-1970 — Page 78

INDUSTRY AND TRADE

47

A new Canadian Textile Policy was announced during the year, designed to 'create conditions in which Canadian industry could continue to move progressively towards viable lines of products on an increasingly competitive basis internationally'. Towards this end, a Textile and Clothing Board was created in November with power to examine allegations of injury to Canadian industry by imports and to consider plans put forward for the rationalisation of the industry. The activities of this Board and the way it develops will naturally be watched with interest.

United States of America: The five-year United States/Hong Kong Agreement, under which exports of all cotton textiles to the United States had been restrained from 1965 to 1970, expired on September 30, 1970. A new three-year Agreement, which was negotiated in May 1970 in Geneva, became effective from October 1, 1970. This continued the comprehensive restraint on exports of cotton textiles to the United States. The terms of the new Agreement are largely similar to those of the old one. The restraint limit for the first year of the new Agreement represents an increase of five per cent over that for the last year of the old Agreement.

=

In April, the US Trade Bill, 1970, (the so-called 'Mills Bill') was introduced in the Ways and Means Committee of the US House of Representatives. The Bill contained provisions which would limit imports into the United States of textiles and certain footwear and thus was of considerable concern to Hong Kong. After chequered progress through the House Ways and Means Committee, the House of Representatives and the Senate Finance Committee it eventually failed to come up for debate in the Senate owing to lack of time at the end of the session. This Bill now automatically dies and it remains to be seen what action will be taken in the new session of Congress in 1971.

For much of the year also, the US Government sought to obtain the voluntary agreement of the Japanese Government to restrain the export of non-cotton textiles to the United States. The talks, which broke down in June and were resumed in October after a meeting between the US President and Japanese Prime Minister, were watched with much interest and some concern by Hong Kong. At the end of the year, no agreement had been reached.