Chu Yi-lan (朱奕嵐), an associate researcher at the Chinese Taipei APEC Study Center, said the overall economic benefits of FTAAP to APEC would be three times higher than those of the ASEAN Plus Three to its member countries.
But the suspension of the Doha round of WTO negotiations, as well as the problems created by the mushrooming bilateral free-trade agreements (FTA), brought the initiative back to the negotiation table.
With few FTAs of its own and its exclusion from major trade blocs such as ASEAN, Taiwan will give full support to FTAAP, although the realization of the trade pact is not yet on the horizon and could be blocked by a single veto.
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