Taiwan’s top trade negotiator on Friday signaled a desire to expand Taipei’s initial agreement with Washington into one that more closely resembles a free-trade deal.
Taiwanese trade officials are talking with their US counterparts about broadening the scope of an arrangement reached earlier this year, Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中), who heads the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations, said in an interview in Taipei.
“One goal is to expand the coverage: More topics like agriculture, labor. We are willing to talk whatever international trade regime needs to address,” Deng told Bloomberg News. “Second is the market access issue, that is tariffs. We hope that one day the US government is ready for tariff talk.”
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
There is no timetable for the next round of talks, he said.
Known formally as the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade, the framework covers issues such as regulatory practices, customs and corruption, but it excludes anything about tariff reductions, traditionally called “market access” — thorny issues that are difficult to resolve, given tensions between the US and China.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has opposed negotiating traditional free-trade deals, due in part to opposition to past deals in the US Congress and a concern that such pacts in the past hurt US workers by incentivizing manufacturers to move overseas for cheaper labor.
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has long sought a free-trade agreement with Washington.
Along with being a major economic coup for Taipei, a broader agreement more closely resembling a free-trade deal would be a political one, too, further solidifying US support.
Taiwan has been encouraged by strong signals of support from US lawmakers, Deng said.
He pointed to a show of unanimous approval in July of the trade initiative with Taiwan by a US Senate that is often been reluctant to ratify trade deals.
Talks are already under way between Taiwan’s trade negotiators and Biden’s team, led by US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪).
Deng said that Taiwan wants to push talks “as far as we can” on a working level, before awaiting sign-off from each government.
One obstacle Taiwan faces in expanding its deal with the US could be the politically sensitive issue of migrant workers employed by the nation’s distant-water fishing fleet.
An estimated 35,000 foreign fishers — predominantly from Southeast Asia — often face mistreatment, a report by the US Department of Labor said.
The report lists Taiwanese seafood as a product of forced labor.
“Our legal system should be able to address that, but it takes time to change, to change law, to change practices,” Deng said.
Taiwan’s advances on accelerating economic dialogue with the US contrasts with the lack of success in efforts to join a major regional alliance called the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
The main hurdle to Taiwan joining that deal centers around Chinese objections.
China has also applied to join the CPTPP. New applicants can only join the trade pact with the support of all other members.
Deng said that Beijing has sent a clear message to countries in that trade agreement that they are only to admit China, not Taiwan.
Taipei has to be realistic that it might not be easy to join, he added.
Deng said a possible solution for Taiwan could be to form a network of bilateral free-trade deals.
“Society here has a fear that China is trying to isolate Taiwan,” and they have achieved that aim in “many areas,” he said.
“So to get Taiwan out of this isolation in the trade and economic area, maybe it’s a series of bilateral deals,” he said.
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