Australia, Peru and Vietnam have expressed interest in joining a budding Asia-Pacific tariff-busting plan that received a boost yesterday with the participation of the US, officials said.
On the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, US Trade Representative Susan Schwab announced the launching of negotiations for the US to join a free trade agreement now confined to Singapore, New Zealand, Chile and Brunei.
The “Comprehensive Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership” agreement, the first trade pact involving a group of Pacific Rim countries, has a broad objective of tearing down trade barriers among participants within a decade.
The first round of negotiations for participation of the US, which has already joined discussions to free up investment and financial services among the five, will be held early next year in Singapore.
“While the United States is the first additional country to seek to join the four original members of the [agreement], we are confident that other countries in the region will ultimately embrace the benefits of participation,” Schwab told a news conference, with ministers from the four countries beside her.
“This high-standard regional agreement will enhance the competitiveness of the countries that are part of it and help promote and facilitate trade and investment among them, increasing their economic growth and development,” she said.
She did not name the countries that had shown interest in joining but officials said they were Australia, Peru and Vietnam.
“I think Australia has shown considerable interest — Peru as well — and there could be one or two other countries,” Singaporean Foreign Minister George Yeo (楊榮文) said.
“I know Vietnam is studying it very closely ... I am hopeful other countries will also come around,” he said.
The US decision to join the agreement will give impetus to a long-term initiative within the 21-member APEC forum to forge a free-trade agreement of the Asia-Pacific, officials said.
Aside from the US, Australia, Singapore, Chile, New Zealand, Brunei, Vietnam and Peru, APEC consists of China, Russia, Japan, Canada and other key economies.
Economies in the APEC group, which has a loose objective of achieving free trade and investment in the Pacific Rim by 2020, account for nearly half of world trade.
Yeo indicated that some APEC members could even join the trans-Pacific agreement before the APEC summit in Peru in November.
Under the agreement, tariffs on all trade products are eliminated within 12 years, with tariffs on 90 percent of trade in goods among the parties eliminated immediately.
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
Japan and the Philippines yesterday signed a defense pact that would allow the tax-free provision of ammunition, fuel, food and other necessities when their forces stage joint training to boost deterrence against China’s growing aggression in the region and to bolster their preparation for natural disasters. Japan has faced increasing political, trade and security tensions with China, which was angered by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s remark that a Chinese attack on Taiwan would be a survival-threatening situation for Japan, triggering a military response. Japan and the Philippines have also had separate territorial conflicts with Beijing in the East and South China
RSS