A senior US trade official on Wednesday committed the Bush administration to strengthening trade ties with Taiwan, but was noncosmmittal in terms of the possibility of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Taiwan and the US.
Karan Bhatia, the deputy US trade representative in charge of trade relations with China and Taiwan, told a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the recently concluded FTA with South Korea that a Taiwan-US FTA would be impossible without the extension of a key trade law that allows the president to negotiate agreements and limits Congress to a yes-or-no vote.
Without the law, called Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which expires at the end of this month, congressional debate over trade agreements usually dooms them or delays them for prolonged periods.
It is the virtually unanimous opinion of people in Washington that TPA will be allowed to die on schedule this month.
Bhatia made his comments in response to a question by Representative Tom Tancredo, a leading supporter of Taiwan in the House of Representatives, who said that in failing to sign a US-Taiwan FTA "I fear that we are driving Taipei into the arms of Beijing."
In response, Bhatia said an extension of TPA is needed "for any contemplation of any FTA with any partner."
Bhatia said that a fresh round of talks on the bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) with Taiwan would be held in Washington this summer.
"In the administration, we are obviously very focused and committed to deepening and strengthening our trade relationships with Taiwan as a major trading partner for us," he said.
TIFA, he said, is "not quote an FTA, but it is a comprehensive effort to address trade and investment barriers that might preclude or otherwise prevent the integration of the economic relationship."
The TIFA talks are "going very well ... We are working concretely to address barriers sector by sector with Taiwan, be it in the investment area, be it in trade in agricultural goods, be it in trade in services. And it's proving to be quite successful," Bhatia said.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
CPBL players, cheerleaders and officials pose at a news conference in Taipei yesterday announcing the upcoming All-Star Game. This year’s CPBL All-Star Weekend is to be held at the Taipei Dome on July 19 and 20.
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a