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.
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A magnitude 5.7 earthquake yesterday struck off the coast of Hualien, causing brief transportation disruptions in northern and eastern Taiwan, as authorities said that aftershocks of magnitude 5 or higher could occur over the next three days. The quake, which hit at 7:24pm at a depth of 24.5km, registered an intensity of 4 in Hualien and Nantou counties, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. In Taipei, the MRT railway’s operations control center received an earthquake alert and initiated standard safety procedures, briefly halting trains on the Bannan (blue) line for about a minute.
RSS