Taiwan still has a long way to go before it can gain entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal, a senior US official said this week.
“There is a lot more that can and should be done,” US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs Daniel Russel said. “My message to Taiwan regarding TPP is this: Keep up the good work.”
Russel was answering questions at the Foreign Press Center in Washington after US President Barack Obama’s summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
Asked about US concerns over Taiwan’s plans to seek second-round entry into the TPP, Russel said the nation had already completed a “significant amount” of reform and made progress on the economy and difficult trade issues.
“On the very positive side, we are proud to host a growing span of investment from Taiwan, and we are pleased that Taiwan companies see so much value in operating in and investing in the United States,” Russel said.
He said that the trade relationship was growing and that barriers were coming down.
“These are all good things,” he said.
Russel said now that first-round TPP negotiations had been completed, details of the trade agreement were becoming fully known.
He said these details could be used as a template for countries like Taiwan “to make progress in their internal reforms by way of liberalizing, by way of making improvements, whether it’s with regard to environment or labor.”
“There’s a lot that major economies throughout the Asia Pacific region, including Taiwan, can do to move into the direction of what would be necessary ultimately to be accepted by all 12 TPP members as a new negotiating partner when the TPP countries ultimately ratify the agreement and then turn to the next step,” he added.
While he did not mention the timeline involved, Politico magazine on Thursday said that TPP might not be taken up by the US Congress until after next year’s presidential election in the US.
The magazine quoted senior congressional staffer Mike Sommers as saying that Congress was unlikely to move on the massive trade package until a lame-duck session more than a year from now.
“White House officials, and pro-free-trade groups and companies had hoped Congress would take up the measure by next summer, although that timetable now looks to be in jeopardy,” Politico said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS