US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is urging US Trade Representative Ron Kirk to promptly resume negotiations with Taiwan for a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) and for a US-Taiwan bilateral investment agreement.
The negotiations were broken off last year by the US in retaliation for Taiwan’s restrictions on the import of US beef.
Because of fears of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as “mad cow disease,” Taiwan only allows beef imports from the US of boneless meat from cattle under 30 months of age.
Ros-Lehtinen wrote to Kirk, saying: “The resumption of TIFA talks and negotiation of a bilateral investment agreement have become even more important now that Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China are establishing closer economic ties.”
“The US must act to ensure that US companies have expanded access to that rapidly growing market and are not subjected to discriminatory treatment. These agreements with Taiwan are essential to ensure a level playing field, and I urge you to move quickly to secure them,” she wrote.
Exports of US goods and services to Taiwan totaled US$32 billion last year and US investment in Taiwan exceeds US$21 billion.
“The beef issue has held things up for more than a year and now Congress is entering the fray and saying: ‘Time to get going,’” said Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US-Taiwan Business Council.
“Reopening the talks will put the bilateral relationship back to normality. But the reopening of the talks is 100 percent tied to resolving the beef issue. Nothing will happen until the beef issue is solved,” he said.
American Chamber of Commerce officials who visited Washington this summer were told that the beef issue was on the verge of being resolved, in which case TIFA talks could reopen in Taipei in October with new Deputy US Trade Representative Demetrios Margantis leading the US delegation.
However, progress on a bilateral investment agreement may not be possible until the administration of US President Barack Obama completes its comprehensive review of US policy on bilateral investment pacts.
TENSE SITUATION: If the storm does not bring rain, Taiwan might have to wait until next month amid water scarcity in the center and south, an expert said Typhoon Surigae is to bring rain to the nation’s east coast and mountainous areas in central and southern Taiwan from Wednesday to Friday, the Central Weather Bureau (CWB) said yesterday. As of 2pm yesterday, the typhoon’s center was 1,170km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip. The radius of the storm was 280km, and it was moving northwest at 9kph, with a maximum wind speed of 198kph. The bureau forecasts that the storm would switch to a northerly direction when approaching the east coast of Luzon Island in the Philippines on Wednesday, CWB forecaster Lin Ding-yi (林定宜) said, adding that Surigae would
SEEKING CLARITY: Some members of the US delegation asked KMT legislators in a meeting to address their party’s position on the so-called ‘1992 consensus,’ sources said A US delegation tasked by US President Joe Biden to reaffirm the country’s commitment to its partnership with Taiwan yesterday wrapped up a three-day visit to Taipei. Former US senator Chris Dodd, former US deputy secretaries of state Richard Armitage and James Steinberg, and US Department of State Office of Taiwan Coordination Director Dan Biers departed at 11:20am on a private jet. The members of the delegation, all friends of Biden, arrived on Wednesday and met with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) and other government officials. During the three-day visit, the delegation also met with six members of the Legislative
Taipei’s street names should reflect a “Taiwanese spirit,” Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) said in an online video released yesterday, in which he asked why many of them are named after locations in China. In a three-minute video uploaded to a Facebook page called “Taiwanese Uncle Ko Wen-je” (台灣阿北柯文哲), the mayor suggested changing the names of Taipei streets. The page’s banner was a photograph of Ko on Jade Mountain’s (玉山) main peak. The page was closed at about noon, about four hours after it was made public. Ko said that street names in the capital named “Ningxia,” “Tibet,” “Beiping” — an old name for
‘AN EXCUSE’: The intent of Beijing’s incursions was ‘intimidation and coercion,’ a senior US official said, adding that China was using the US to justify its actions Chinese carrier drills and stepped-up incursions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone in the past few weeks are meant to send a message to Washington to stand down and back off, security sources in Taipei said. The increased activity — which China, unusually, described as “combat drills” on Wednesday — has raised alarm in both Taipei and Washington, although security officials do not see it as a sign of an imminent attack. Rather, at least some of the exercises are practicing “access denial” maneuvers to prevent foreign forces from coming to Taipei’s defense in a war, one official familiar with Taiwan’s security
RSS