Taiwanese trade officials are directing their lobbying efforts at the US business community in an attempt to drum up support for the early signing of a free trade agreement (FTA) between the two countries, Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Steve Chen (陳瑞隆) said on Sunday.
Chen made the remarks while talking about the government's efforts to secure an FTA with the US the day after his arrival in New York on a transit stop, after taking part in a second round of FTA negotiations between Taiwan and El Salvador and Honduras in San Francisco.
As the US-Central America Free Trade Agreement came into effect this year, the government is working to sign FTAs with Central American states as part of its efforts to help Taiwanese manufacturers make inroads into the US market, Chen said.
Chen said that many countries, including Taiwan, are eager to enter FTAs with the US, but the US government is focusing its efforts on WTO talks and the formation of a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). As a result, whether the US will sign FTAs with other trade partners will depend on whether bilateral trade relations are close enough.
Because of the complex Taiwan-US-China political relations, Taiwan has failed to make much progress in its FTA talks with the US, Chen said. However, he claimed that the government's determination and efforts to secure a Taiwan-US FTA "will not be affected" by any unfavorable conditions.
Noting that the Ministry of Economic Affairs has made FTA talks with the US a top priority for this year, Chen said Taiwan is doing everything possible to win the US industrial and business sector's support for signing an FTA.
Touching on the second round of FTA talks with El Salvador and Honduras, Chen said the talks went smoothly and that this was Taiwan's first simultaneous FTA consultation with two nations.
Following a series of intensive trilateral negotiations in San Francisco, trade officials from Taiwan, El Salvador and Honduras have reached a consensus on all FTA provisions, Chen said, adding that after the completion of a third round of FTA talks in Honduras in September, the three countries will be able to ink FTAs by the year's end.
ADVANCED: Previously, Taiwanese chip companies were restricted from building overseas fabs with technology less than two generations behind domestic factories Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp, would no longer be restricted from investing in next-generation 2-nanometer chip production in the US, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. However, the ministry added that the world’s biggest contract chipmaker would not be making any reckless decisions, given the weight of its up to US$30 billion investment. To safeguard Taiwan’s chip technology advantages, the government has barred local chipmakers from making chips using more advanced technologies at their overseas factories, in China particularly. Chipmakers were previously only allowed to produce chips using less advanced technologies, specifically
BRAVE NEW WORLD: Nvidia believes that AI would fuel a new industrial revolution and would ‘do whatever we can’ to guide US AI policy, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Tuesday said he is ready to meet US president-elect Donald Trump and offer his help to the incoming administration. “I’d be delighted to go see him and congratulate him, and do whatever we can to make this administration succeed,” Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg Television, adding that he has not been invited to visit Trump’s home base at Mar-a-Lago in Florida yet. As head of the world’s most valuable chipmaker, Huang has an opportunity to help steer the administration’s artificial intelligence (AI) policy at a moment of rapid change.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) quarterly sales topped estimates, reinforcing investor hopes that the torrid pace of artificial intelligence (AI) hardware spending would extend into this year. The go-to chipmaker for Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc reported a 39 percent rise in December-quarter revenue to NT$868.5 billion (US$26.35 billion), based on calculations from monthly disclosures. That compared with an average estimate of NT$854.7 billion. The strong showing from Taiwan’s largest company bolsters expectations that big tech companies from Alphabet Inc to Microsoft Corp would continue to build and upgrade datacenters at a rapid clip to propel AI development. Growth accelerated for
TARIFF SURGE: The strong performance could be attributed to the growing artificial intelligence device market and mass orders ahead of potential US tariffs, analysts said The combined revenue of companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange and the Taipei Exchange for the whole of last year totaled NT$44.66 trillion (US$1.35 trillion), up 12.8 percent year-on-year and hit a record high, data compiled by investment consulting firm CMoney showed on Saturday. The result came after listed firms reported a 23.92 percent annual increase in combined revenue for last month at NT$4.1 trillion, the second-highest for the month of December on record, and posted a 15.63 percent rise in combined revenue for the December quarter at NT$12.25 billion, the highest quarterly figure ever, the data showed. Analysts attributed the
RSS