When Conner Peripherals Inc announced that it was closing its Irvine, Scotland-based plant in October (CI No 2,286) the company blamed a loophole that allowed manufacturers in Singapore to export disk drives to the UK without incurring the 4.9% duty normally incurred when selling into the European Community: Singapore is exempt under the General System for Preferences, a subset of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; a spokesman told The Guardian back then that the factory had been built on the assumption that the Uruguay GATT round would have been completed much sooner and have plugged the gap Conner has yet to decommission the Irvine factory, though the process is due to begin at the end of the month – by which time the Uruguay Round should be signed and sealed.
