Caldera: We do. But whatever we do we do directly with investors to make sure that they comply with the regulations. We have had cases where there were infractions and these infractions have been corrected. The press played [an] important role in pointing out infractions, and we followed up and made sure that they were corrected. But the problem is, when the correction is not reported, this relationship with the investor is like holding a dove in your hand. If you tighten it too much, it dies. If you slacken it too much, it flies away. So if you want to keep it, you have to find an equilibrium.
TT: You had worked for the WTO and GATT for over a decade. As Taiwan is about to enter the WTO, what's your advice for Taiwan when the island is admitted to this multilateral trading system?
Caldera: Taiwan would have to be very careful in the area of analyzing competitiveness of products. Unfortunately the WTO .... is much more liberal [regarding] agricultural products than it is [regarding] industrial products. So for a country, the situation is unbalanced in that in industrial products we have a lot of checks-and-balance on things we cannot do as far as subsidies are concerned. But in agriculture, countries like France and even Germany -- now with the eastern Germany exceptions -- are impeding progress in liberalization.
Maybe Taiwan needs to consider the possibility of joining countries like Australia, New Zealand, India and other countries in the Cairns Group so that we have an even [playing] field because there are agricultural products here.
[The Cairns Group was formed in 1986 with the goal of bringing about reforms in world trade rules to make agriculture subject to market forces. It is a coalition of 18 agricultural exporting countries which account for one-third of the world's agricultural exports.]
These countries under the Cairns Group have a position [that is] not the same as the old industrialized countries. These are newly industrialized countries, so they have fresher views to offer on something like agriculture.
I had the opportunity of sharing the trade negotiation tabled on services in the FTAA [Free Trade Area of the Americas] negotiating process. And through this service negotiating group, I also got involved in electronic commerce negotiation.
I think this is an area that Taiwan should lead. Possibly try to attain the presidency of the electronic trade negotiating table in the next round of negotiation because there are a lot of people here [in Taiwan] with tremendous knowledge-based manufacturing capacity.
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