US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will send a senior official to Taiwan in the near future to discuss ways of broadening economic relations between the two sides, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said in a statement yesterday.
Clinton revealed the decision during a meeting with former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), Taiwan’s representative to the APEC leaders’ summit in Vladivostok, Russia, on Sunday, the statement said.
Clinton said she would send Atul Keshap, coordinator of economic policy in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the US Department of State, to “consult on further broadening the US economic relationships with Taiwan,” according to the AIT statement.
The visit by Keshap, who concurrently serves as the senior US APEC official, is expected to pave the way for the resumption of long-stalled talks under the Taiwan-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), which is seen as a precursor to a full-fledged free-trade agreement.
Clinton expressed her appreciation for President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) leadership in bringing Taiwan in line with international standards on imports such as beef, said the AIT, which represents US interests in Taiwan in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.
She was referring to the passage of amendments to the Act Governing Food Sanitation (食品衛生法) in late July that opened the doors to imports of beef containing traces of ractopamine, a livestock feed additive. According to the AIT, Clinton told Lien that the US was looking forward to Taiwan making the regulatory changes necessary to implement the legislation.
She also highlighted the value of greater engagement on economic and trade issues of interest to both sides, saying the US and Taiwan would now begin exploratory work and prepare for future expert-level engagement under the umbrella of TIFA, the AIT said.
Talks under TIFA have been halted since 2007 due to the beef dispute, which began over concerns about the safety of US beef following the discovery of mad cow disease cases in that country.
Washington considered resuming TIFA talks in late 2010, but decided against the idea early last year after Taiwan seized shipments of US beef containing ractopamine residue.
The AIT statement said the US and Taiwan were now taking steps to resume TIFA talks in the hope of expanding economic ties.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS