With just five days to go before the presidential and legislative elections, it is unfortunate that there have been no meaningful policy debates between the major political parties, let alone discussions about national trade and economic issues.
The main focus between parties this time is their line on China, the candidates’ personalities, slander and more slander, as campaigners believe those are the key points that impress voters, rather than policy-oriented debates.
During televised debates and platform presentations last month, presidential candidates made various pledges regarding economic development and foreign trade if elected, but spent little time discussing or refuting others’ suggestions.
What was also left unmentioned were candidates’ views about current challenges and guidance for the future. From their performance, it appeared as if they had turned a blind eye to the potential threat of global macroeconomic volatility, as if the “status quo” were static.
However, the global economic landscape is changing all the time and a government’s economic policy often reflects changes in international supply and demand, the rise or fall of global trade and its role in relation to markets and civil power. So one might wonder what the major trends in the economic front are and how candidates would react to them.
Unfortunately, viewers were only provided with monologues that were sometimes less than inspiring.
While Taiwan benefited from the US-China trade dispute and outperformed its major rivals due to its industrial structure, the current state of the global economy is fragile and could be easily damaged if an unexpected event occurs that jeopardizes the nation’s export-reliant economy.
The US-China dispute and Japan-South Korea trade row appear to be easing, the Brexit saga seems to have a clearer direction, and equity markets worldwide are mostly in good shape, but there is no guarantee that things will stay this way in the coming months, as an economic slowdown is on the cards and dramatic changes always happen.
It is a good sign that various research institutes at home and abroad have in the past few weeks forecast that Taiwan’s economic performance this year is likely to be little changed from last year, while a likely recovery in the electronics sector would bring much-needed cheer for local manufacturers and exporters to keep the nation’s economy growing steadily.
However, GDP growth has been falling below the global average for several years and is predicted to still be less than 3 percent this year — a not very exciting figure compared with past decades.
Given the lack of discussion about economic policy, voters have no clue what candidates would do to avoid widening the wealth gap and curb imbalances in regional resource allocations; how they plan to deal with the aging population and slowing growth in productivity; how they would increase employment of young people and address inter-generational gaps; or what their solutions are to problems related to the gig economy, as well as other issues related to taxes, public finance and fiscal stimulus.
Ironically, people are expected to continue to be preoccupied by China’s slowdown, the Hong Kong protests, the US elections, climate change, populism and social unrest around the world, but it is no coincidence that these topics were also not discussed.
The disappearance of these topics reflects candidates’ ideas about responsibility. In this, they all failed a crucial test of leadership.
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