Taiwan’s restrictions on imports of pork and beef from the US remain a major barrier to trade between the two countries, according to a US report that highlights significant foreign barriers to American exports.
Taiwan has not followed international standards or a bilateral protocol with Washington on the issue of US meat imports, said the US Trade Representative report, which was released on Friday.
While Taiwan and the US agreed on a protocol in 2009 to expand market access and to fully reopen the Taiwan market to all US beef and beef products, Taiwan flip-flopped on the agreement and amended the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生管理法) the following year to ban imports of US ground beef and other beef products, the report said.
“This amendment is contrary to Taiwan’s obligations under the 2009 beef protocol,” the report said.
It called on Taiwan to open its market fully to US beef and beef products on the basis of science, the guidelines of the World Organisation for Animal Health, the US’ negligible risk status and the beef protocol.
The report also criticized Taiwan’s zero-tolerance policy on imports of US pork containing ractopamine, a feed additive that promotes leanness in animals.
Taiwan should implement the proposed maximum residue limit (MRL) for ractopamine without delay, and move to accept and approve new applications for MRLs based on science, in a timely manner, the report said.
It also listed other issues that the US sees as obstacles to broadening trade with Taiwan, including a ban on the use of biotechnology food ingredients and processed food containing biotechnology ingredients in school meals.
Nonetheless, the report said that the US has made trade progress with Taiwan in other areas, such as the protection of intellectual property rights and the establishment of a tolerance level for glycoalkaloids — toxic chemical compounds commonly found in potatoes.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs said on Saturday that it would work with the authorities to address trade issues that are of concern to both sides.
According to the report, US exports to Taiwan grew by an annual 17.5 percent last year to US$30.2 billion, while its imports from Taiwan increased 7.8 percent to US$45.8 billion.
Taiwan was the US’ 15th-largest export market last year, it said.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, has decided to slow down its 3-nanometer chip production as Intel Corp, one of its major customers, plans to push back the launch of its new Meteor Lake tGPU chipsets to the end of next year, market researcher TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said yesterday. That means Intel has canceled almost all of the 3-nanometer capacity booked for next year, with only a small amount of wafer input remaining for engineering verification, the Taipei-based researcher said in a report. Based on Intel’s original schedule, TSMC was to start producing the new chipsets in
DATA SHOW DOWNTURN: Manufacturing in Taiwan contracted as production and demand slumped, while growth in chip exports last month eased in South Korea World chip sales growth has decelerated for six straight months in another sign that the global economy is straining under the weight of rising interest rates and mounting geopolitical risks. Semiconductor sales rose 13.3 percent in June from a year earlier, down from 18 percent in May, data from the global peak industry body showed. The slowdown is the longest since the US-China trade dispute in 2018. The three-month moving average in chip sales has correlated with the global economy’s performance in the past few decades. The latest weakness comes as concern about a worldwide recession has prompted chipmakers such as Samsung
Italy is close to clinching a deal initially worth US$5 billion with Intel Corp to build an advanced semiconductor packaging and assembly plant in the country, two sources briefed on discussions said yesterday. Intel’s investment in Italy is part of a wider plan announced by the US chipmaker earlier this year to invest US$88 billion in building capacity across Europe, which is striving to cut its reliance on Asian chip imports and ease a supply crunch that has curbed output in the region’s strategic auto sector. Asking not to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, the sources said the
Malaysia is scrambling to protect its assets as the descendants of the last sultan of the remote Philippine region of Sulu look to enforce a US$15 billion arbitration award in a dispute over a colonial-era land deal. In 1878, two European colonists signed a deal with the sultan for the use of his territory in present-day Malaysia — an agreement that independent Malaysia honored until 2013, paying the monarch’s descendants about US$1,000 per year. Now, 144 years later after the original deal, Malaysia is on the hook for the second-largest arbitration award on record for stopping the payments after a bloody incursion