President-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday said that the most important issue for the nation to deal with in its attempt to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is to adjust its industrial and trade policies, as well as its laws.
“Tsai said that the TPP is no doubt a high quality free-trade agreement [FTA] with 30 chapters that, besides cuts in tariffs, focus mostly on coordination between laws, governance and administrative procedures,” Democratic Progressive Party spokesman Ruan Jhao-syong (阮昭雄) said at a news conference following the party’s weekly Central Standing Committee meeting in Taipei, which focused on gaining membership of the TPP.
“For Taiwan to have innovations and upgrades in its economy, many laws need major revisions to be in line with international standards and this is more important than deciding whether to make concessions during negotiations [to join the TPP],” Ruan quoted Tsai as saying.
Photo: Chen Chih-chu, Taipei Times
Ruan said that the priorities of the new government would be to implement reforms to the nation’s economic structure.
“The DPP has begun to prepare for global trade negotiations and a special TPP task force headed by [DPP think tank the New Frontier Foundation executive director] Lin Chuan (林全) has been set up,” Ruan said. “The task force is to actively push for bilateral FTAs, as well as regional economic and trade agreements for the ‘new southward policy.’”
The TPP taskforce under the DPP's New Frontier Foundation think tank was created in December 2014.
Tsai made the remarks after Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research deputy executive director Lee Chun (李淳) gave a special presentation on revisions to the law and economic reforms as the nation seeks to join the TPP.
TPP membership was one of Tsai’s most important trade and economic policies during the presidential election campaign.
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