Taiwan’s top trade negotiator and a senior US trade official on Friday discussed how to proceed with a recently signed trade deal and issues to be addressed in the next stage of talks, the government said.
Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中), who heads the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations, held a virtual meeting with Deputy US Trade Representative (USTR) Sarah Bianchi, exchanging information on the two sides’ preparations to implement the first agreement signed under the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade, Deng’s office said in a statement released on Friday.
Taiwan mainly sought to understand what would happen when the US Congress passes the trade agreement signed on June 1, the statement said.
Photo: Taipei Times file
Taipei and Washington need to notify each other when all required domestic procedures are completed, with the trade agreement taking effect the day after both notifications are made.
Deng and Bianchi agreed to implement the first agreement in a timely manner and touched on topics in the next stage of the trade talks, the statement said.
There are seven remaining issues under the trade initiative formally launched in August last year, and they involve labor, environment, agriculture, digital trade, standards, state-owned enterprises, and nonmarket policies and practices, it said.
No date has been set for when the next stage of negotiations would start, but the issues set to be discussed are the environment, labor and agriculture, it added.
The first agreement signed in June covers trade facilitation, good regulatory practices, anti-corruption, domestic regulation of services, and small and medium-sized enterprises, the USTR office said.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
Taiwanese celebrities Hank Chen (陳漢典) and Lulu Huang (黃路梓茵) announced yesterday that they are planning to marry. Huang announced and posted photos of their engagement to her social media pages yesterday morning, joking that the pair were not just doing marketing for a new show, but “really getting married.” “We’ve decided to spend all of our future happy and hilarious moments together,” she wrote. The announcement, which was later confirmed by the talent agency they share, appeared to come as a surprise even to those around them, with veteran TV host Jacky Wu (吳宗憲) saying he was “totally taken aback” by the news. Huang,
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
RSS