The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Taipei yesterday urged the government to resume its delayed Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) talks with the US because the timetable was “now,” AmCham chairman Alan Eusden said during the launch of the chamber’s annual Taiwan White Paper.
Eusden said he would talk to officials in the US and at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) to try to “get the TIFA talks started hopefully by the end of this year.”
The AmCham chairman called on both governments to put aside differences over the US beef imports issue.
The chamber urged Taiwan to balance its trade ties with the US so it will not beecome overly dependent on China.
It also said the newly signed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) — while important — “is not in itself enough to restore Taiwan’s luster as an investment destination.”
Taiwan needs to improve its domestic business climate before it “might once again receive the kind of ‘buzz’ it enjoyed as one of the ‘Asian Tigers,’” said Eusden, president of Corning Display Technologies Taiwan Co.
In the White Paper, titled Aspire to Greatness, AmCham made 165 recommendations in 22 sectors.
While lauding the government’s executive restructuring plan, the chamber pointed a finger at the National Communications Commission, calling it “aloof with no strong leadership,” Eusden said.
In the infrastructure sector, the chamber said President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) hyped target to lower the nation’s carbon emissions in 2025 to 2000 levels was “unachievable” — unless emissions from all sectors are cut to zero — based on the committee’s calculations, Paul Lee (李雨朴), co-chair of AmCham’s infrastructure committee, told the yesterday’s presentation.
Lee urged the government to consider building coal-fired power plants — what he called the second-best choice to nuclear power plants and US$300 million cheaper each than gas-fired plants.
In terms of the nation’s tax competitiveness, the chamber called on the government to narrow the gap between the lowered corporate income tax rate, at 17 percent, and individual income tax rates.
Without taking neighboring countries’ tax rates into consideration, Taiwan’s 40 percent top rate for individual income taxes should be lowered to below 34 percent, less than double the corporate income tax rate, Eunice Kuo (郭心傑), co-chair of the chamber’s tax committee, said at the presentation.
Turning to its requests to Washington, AmCham said it was time for the US to dispatch Cabinet-level officials to visit Taiwan since the last such visits occurred more than a decade ago.
AmCham also urged Washington to prepare to grant visa-waiver treatment to Taiwanese travelers, noting that Taiwan is the US’ ninth-largest trading partner.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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