Taiwan will find its own way, despite not being a part of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) said yesterday.
Fifteen Asia-Pacific nations — the 10 ASEAN members, as well as Australia, China, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea — signed the trade deal on Sunday. The members together account for about one-third of the world’s GDP.
Responding to media reports that Taiwan would be left “out in the cold” or “marginalized economically” after the signing of the RCEP, Wang said the effects of the deal would not be “overwhelming” or “immediate.”
Photo: CNA
“After going through the details it seems that the level of trade liberalization with the RCEP is relatively low,” Wang said. “We do not think it will have a large impact on Taiwanese businesses in the short term.”
“However, of course, we will communicate as soon as possible with business leaders in affected industries to figure out how to improve our competitiveness,” she said.
The local industries that are most likely to be affected are steel, petrochemicals, machinery and textiles, Wang said.
Although subsidies are not being considered, the ministry is open to “helping Taiwanese businesses with research and development,” she said.
The impact of the RCEP is lessened by the fact that many of the signatory nations already have free-trade agreements (FTAs) in place, and many “sensitive items” are not included in the list of goods affected by the deal, Wang said.
“Most of the ASEAN countries already have FTAs with Japan, South Korea and China, and the RCEP does not go far beyond those FTAs in terms of cutting tariffs,” she said. “The bigger deal is, with the RCEP, China and Japan now effectively have an FTA, as do South Korea and Japan.”
Wang said that some items “sensitive to Taiwan,” such as machine tools and upstream materials for nylon fabric, were not liberalized.
“Some of the items we find sensitive are also sensitive to China,” Wang added.
She said that it would have been politically insupportable for Taiwan to try and gain entry into the Beijing-driven RCEP.
“If we had pursued our inclusion in [the RCEP], we would have required the consent of all the countries, including China,” Wang said. “As a condition, China would have certainly demanded that Taiwan agree to the ‘1992 consensus.’ Is this something our people can live with?”
Citing the strength of Taiwanese manufacturers, Wang said Taiwan would strive to participate in other trade deals, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“We are still protected by the Informational Technology Agreement under the WTO, and this ensures that more than half of our exports are tariff-free,” she said.
“When one path is blocked off, we will find another way through,” Wang added.
The “1992 consensus” — a term former Mainland Affairs Council chairman Su Chi (蘇起) in 2006 admitted making up in 2000 — refers to a tacit understanding between the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Chinese Communist Party that both sides acknowledge there is “one China,” with each side having its own interpretation of what “China” means.
The Investment Commission yesterday approved a Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) application to invest an additional US$3.5 billion in its Arizona subsidiary to manufactured advanced chips. The world’s largest contract chipmaker’s board of directors last month approved the funding project after TSMC started moving manufacturing equipment into the fab in December last year in preparation for the production of 4-nanometer chips next year. TSMC said it has also commenced the second phase of facility construction in Arizona. The second fab is to produce semiconductors using 3-nanometer technology in 2026. Altogether, TSMC plans to spend US$40 billion on the Arizona fabs, doubling its
KEY SECTOR: Taiwan’s new chip legislation is insufficient, and a more strategic ‘chip act’ that covers the whole semiconductor ecosystem is needed, MediaTek’s chairman said MediaTek Inc (聯發科) chairman Rick Tsai (蔡明介) yesterday urged the government to formulate a state semiconductor strategy and comprehensive “chip act” that includes local chip designers and smaller-scale semiconductor companies, as they are facing intensifying competition from China. The government is playing an increasingly important role in safeguarding the local semiconductor industry’s competitiveness, given that the US, the EU and Japan are offering hefty subsidies and significant tax incentives to build semiconductor capacity domestically, as they have realized the strategic importance of semiconductors, Tsai said. To implement such a program, the government should take steps to finance a “chip act,” Tsai said
Microsoft Corp has threatened to cut off access to its Internet search data, which it licenses to rival search engines, if they do not stop using it as the basis for their own artificial intelligence (AI) chat products, people familiar with the dispute have said. The software maker licenses the data in its Bing search index — a map of the Internet that can be quickly scanned in real time — to other companies that offer Web search, such as Apollo Global Management Inc’s Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. Last month, Microsoft integrated a cousin of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chat technology, into Bing. Rivals
MOUNTING PRESSURE: Although bank failures in the US and Europe would not cause systemic risks, it would dampen consumers’ willingness to spend, GlobalWafers said GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s third-largest silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that the financial turmoil in the US and Europe has dimmed the outlook for chip demand in the second half of this year, as growing economic uncertainty could dampen consumer spending. The Hsinchu-based wafer manufacturer said it is seeing greater pressure from economic uncertainty on the industry’s recovery, as customers would have not expected Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank and a tier-one bank like Credit Suisse Group SA to collapse suddenly. Although the failures are unlikely to cause systemic risks, consumers would be cautious of spending on non-essential items, such
RSS