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Taiwan's Congress friends plan early push

Taiwan's supporters in the US House of Representatives plan to make an early push to enact legislation urging the Bush administration to negotiate a free trade agreement (FTA) with Taiwan amid a new effort to strengthen the economic relations between the two countries, congressional sources said.

A week into the Democratic Party-controlled 110th Congress, the sources said that members of the Taiwan Caucus would seek to strengthen US ties with Taiwan, with economics taking the lead.

"There ought to be a big push" on the economic and trade side of the bilateral relationship, one congressional staffer told the Taipei Times.

That will be manifest in an effort to promote an FTA, he said.

The elevation of Representative Charles Rangel, a New York Democrat, to the chairmanship of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee is seen as a positive sign for Taiwan.

Rangel is a vocal supporter of Taiwan and is a regular attendee at ceremonies in the Capitol honoring visiting Taiwanese dignitaries. Rangel "will help dictate how the Democrats will approach trade," a congressional source said.

The committee oversees trade legislation and would be the panel in charge of any FTA bills. President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) has made an FTA a major goal of his administration in its relations with Washington.

While the Democrats are seen as traditionally less free-trade oriented than the Republicans, from whom the Democrats took control of Congress last year, much of their opposition to FTAs has been because they lacked what the Democrats considered adequate worker protection, labor standards and environmental controls.

Those concerns do not apply in a big way to Taiwan, congressional sources said. As a result, "Taiwan is a great candidate" for an FTA, he said.

Another plus for Taiwan is expected to be the appointment of Representative Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democrat, to be a co-chairwoman of the Taiwan Caucus, replacing Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, who won election to the Senate last year.

The other three co-chairmen, representatives Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat; Steve Chabot, an Ohio Republican; and Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, won re-election and remain in their caucus posts.

Berkley, whose appointment to the caucus post has not yet been announced, was named to the Ways and Means Committee this year, having served previously in the International Relations Committee (which last week was renamed the Committee on Foreign Affairs). In the committee, Berkley could exercise a degree of influence on the course of any FTA legislation.

Overall, sources say, the new Congress "is interested in this [US-Taiwan] relationship. We want to strengthen the relationship and build on the positive aspects of the relationship."

While Taiwan's supporters recognize the need to maintain good relations with China, in view of its role in the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons program, along with the war in Iraq and terror issues, congressional staffers say that cross-strait issues should not stand in the way of better overall relations with Taiwan.

"We cannot be held hostage to that issue," one source said.

Members of Congress will also be looking at Taiwan's cascade of financial and political scandals and the political gridlock between the pan-blues and the pan-greens.

However, "we must not let ourselves be bogged down" by those issues, "we must think ahead," one observer said, to help advance Taiwan's political development and democracy.
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