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.
‘CROCODILE TEARS’: The Taiwan Statebuilding Party said the Kaohsiung mayor was only apologizing after a poll revealed that 45% of the city’s residents favored a recall Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) at a city council session yesterday apologized for taking three months off last year to campaign for January’s presidential election. Han said that he was now prioritizing municipal affairs and was focused primarily on preventing the spread of COVID-19. He was “doing two days’ work each day” to make up for time lost, he said. Han on May 5 attended a city council session for the first time in 201 days, giving a report on pandemic response measures. At yesterday’s session, Han said the Kaohsiung City Government would be injecting NT$50 million (US$1.67 million) into the
Taipei City Councilor Wu Pei-yi (吳沛憶) on Saturday urged the Taipei Department of Cultural Affairs to designate the Japanese colonial-era Showa Building (昭和樓) a cultural heritage site to protect it from being demolished. Wu made the remarks after the department on Tuesday last week visited the building to evaluate it for preservation, a standard procedure before a public building that is more than 50 years old is razed. The Showa Building, on Zhongxiao E Road Sec 2, was a rare kind of office building when it was constructed in 1942, Wu said. The three-story building was built with reinforced concrete and has European-style
A proposal by the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) to permanently ban sitting in Taipei Railway Station’s main hall has received a mixed reaction online, with some social media users vowing to launch a sit-in at the station. Gatherings at the hall have been prohibited since Feb. 29 in accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s policy of reducing crowd sizes in public places. A Facebook user organizing the sit-in said that the hall is a public space and there is no legitimate reason to ban sitting on the floor. He said he suspected that the proposal was made due to business considerations and
Chinese over-the-top (OTT) service provider iQiyi cannot register as a provider in Taiwan after the Mainland Affairs Council declared it to be an illegal service, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday. Both iQiyi and WeTV were deemed to be illegal Chinese OTT operators in an interdepartmental meeting on Friday last week, officials said, adding that this prohibits them from marketing their services in Taiwan or seeking subscribers. The government plans to block a local server that iQiyi has been using to transmit content to domestic audiences, which would disrupt its content transmission. OTT Entertainment Ltd, which is enlisted by iQiyi to
RSS