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US trade official to visit in June

A senior US trade official is expected to visit next month in hopes of restarting the high-level bilateral trade dialogue that has been stalled since the beginning of last year.

Assistant US Trade Representative Charles Freeman announced his plans in a speech in Washington on Thursday.

Freeman cited the progress Taiwan has made in settling such trade disputes as pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and rice imports. He said such progress has prompted Washington to think that the time is ripe to resume high-level dialogue.

"We are thinking about a high-level delegation," Freeman said. "We would like to take some steps. I would like to go to Taiwan as early as next month to see whether a high-level delegation makes sense."

"We believe that some steps Taiwan has made have been very encouraging," he said.

"We'd like to press ahead," he said.

"At the conclusion of his trip, if there's something substantive to discuss, I will certainly recommend that a powerful delegation be sent to Taipei to reopen the stalled talks," he said.

The discussions will take place under the auspices of the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) between Taiwan and the US.

"We've seen real movement forward by Taiwan in settling the trade issues separating the two sides, and we think we're just about ready to try to reconvene which we could not do for a while," Freeman said.

"Taiwan's record on intellectual property piracy is another matter," Freeman indicated.

There, the two sides remain at loggerheads. On Monday the US retained Taiwan on its so-called Priority Watch List under its "Special 301" anti-piracy laws for the fourth year in a row. That designation raises the possibility of US trade sanctions against Taiwan.

"The US trade office spent a lot of time in recent months agonizing over 301, and a lot of us have been very anxious to move Taiwan off of areas that didn't belong," Freeman said.

He heaped praise on the government's efforts to fight piracy, but noted, as did the Special 301 report, that pirates have found ingenious ways around new legislation and enforcement efforts to continue the trafficking in pirated goods.

In regard to the possibility of a free-trade agreement between Taipei and Washington, Freeman had little optimistic to say. His office's constituency, he noted, is the US business community.

"They literally draw up the agenda for us," he said.

"In the past two years, not one US businessman has come forward to press for an FTA," he said.

"A FTA has never formally been raised by either government," he noted.

"The US industries and the constituencies that are ultimately needed to support an FTA through Congress have not been suppor-tive, and some businesses have opposed such an agreement," he said.

Any move toward an FTA will have to wait until the settlement of disputes under the TIFA, Freemen said.
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