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.
With this year’s Semicon Taiwan trade show set to kick off on Wednesday, market attention has turned to the mass production of advanced packaging technologies and capacity expansion in Taiwan and the US. With traditional scaling reaching physical limits, heterogeneous integration and packaging technologies have emerged as key solutions. Surging demand for artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC) and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips has put technologies such as chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS), integrated fan-out (InFO), system on integrated chips (SoIC), 3D IC and fan-out panel-level packaging (FOPLP) at the center of semiconductor innovation, making them a major focus at this year’s trade show, according
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
DEBUT: The trade show is to feature 17 national pavilions, a new high for the event, including from Canada, Costa Rica, Lithuania, Sweden and Vietnam for the first time The Semicon Taiwan trade show, which opens on Wednesday, is expected to see a new high in the number of exhibitors and visitors from around the world, said its organizer, SEMI, which has described the annual event as the “Olympics of the semiconductor industry.” SEMI, which represents companies in the electronics manufacturing and design supply chain, and touts the annual exhibition as the most influential semiconductor trade show in the world, said more than 1,200 enterprises from 56 countries are to showcase their innovations across more than 4,100 booths, and that the event could attract 100,000 visitors. This year’s event features 17
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
RSS