Taiwan and the US have not yet scheduled a date for their next round of talks under the bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said yesterday.
The confirmation came a day after Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中), who also heads the Cabinet’s Office of Trade Negotiations, said that TIFA talks were unlikely to be held this year, because the administration of US President Donald Trump has yet to fill vacant deputy trade representative posts.
Three deputy representative positions at the Office of the US Trade Representative are vacant, Deng said, adding that while the Trump administration has named people to fill those positions, they have not yet been confirmed by the US Congress.
Even if the US Congress quickly approves the nominations, “there will not be time to hold [TIFA talks] this year,” given the time it takes to process the appointments at an administrative level, Deng added.
“Our TIFA council meetings with Taiwan typically include the deputy US trade representative,” AIT spokesman Sonia Urbom said. “This position is currently vacant, so that makes it difficult to make decisions about the scheduling of a TIFA meeting.”
Taiwan and the US signed the bilateral trade agreement in 1994 and have held 10 rounds of trade talks since then.
TIFA is the major negotiating channel for high-ranking trade officials of the two nations, led by officials at the deputy ministerial level.
The most recent round of the talks last year was led by Vice Minister of Economic Affairs Wang Mei-hua (王美花) and then-deputy US trade representative Robert Holleyman.
The first TIFA meeting was held in 1995 and continued in 1997, 1998, 2004, 2006 and 2007, taking place in Taipei and Washington on a rotating basis before a five-year hiatus from 2008 to 2012 due to disputes over imports of US beef containing the “leanness-enhancing” drug ractopamine.
The US regarded Taiwan’s ractopamine ban as a trade barrier and implied on numerous occasions that a resumption of bilateral talks under the TIFA rested on the resolution of the beef issue.
The Legislative Yuan in July 2012 passed amendments to a Act Governing Food Safety and Sanitation (食品安全衛生管理法), paving the way for imports of US beef containing ractopamine.
TIFA talks subsequently resumed in March 2013 in Taipei.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS