US Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Thomas Donohue yesterday called for strengthening bilateral trade with Taiwan and expanding US business interests in the Asia-Pacific region in an address to the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei.
“I’m traveling halfway around the world to promote trade because this is where half of the world’s economy now operates,” an AmCham press statement quoted Donohue as saying.
“To successfully compete in Asia, the United States needs to show new leadership on trade. Expanding ties with Taiwan has long been and must continue to be a critical component of our work in the region,” he said.
Donohue’s speech to AmCham came after he spent a week at the APEC meetings in Singapore, where he urged world leaders to expand trade between the US and the Asia-Pacific region.
With more than US$16 billion in cumulative investment, the US remains the largest foreign investor in Taiwan, AmCham said in the statement.
“In recent years, Taiwan has made some important progress in creating a stronger environment for business by improving intellectual property protection and acceding to the WTO Government Procurement Agreement,” Donohue said. “But obstacles remain to even closer economic and commercial ties between the two economies. Progress is needed in the areas of regulatory transparency and the growing penchant of regulators to invent unique-to-Taiwan solutions that make it harder for companies to do business on the island.”
The US Chamber, one of the world’s largest business federations, representing more than 3 million businesses and organizations, viewed negotiations on a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with Taiwan as the foundation for expanding commercial ties between the two trade partners.
“Full implementation of the protocol that would reopen Taiwan’s market to US beef would be a significant step forward,” Donohue said.
“This would advance the goal of deepening the robust commercial relationship that has long been critical to both economies,” he said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained