Taiwan’s first phase of tariff talks with the US went “smoothly” and the government hopes to take this challenge as an opportunity to promote a new Taiwan-plus-the-US layout for trade, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday.
Major semiconductor producer Taiwan was facing a 32 percent tariff hit until US President Donald Trump on Wednesday last week put all tariffs excluding China on hold for talks to take place.
Taiwan and the US on Friday held their first direct talks about the tariffs.
Photo: Screen grab from the Presidential Office’s Flickr page
Speaking to representatives from university alumni associations at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Lai said Taiwan has overcome challenges before and has to work to turn crises into opportunities to transform the nation’s economy.
“Taiwan has started negotiations with the United States, and the first phase of the negotiations went smoothly,” his office cited him as saying.
Lai said he “hoped to use this challenge as an opportunity for Taiwan to promote the new layout of ‘Taiwan plus one,’ that is, Taiwan plus the United States.”
Lai has pledged to seek a zero tariff regime with the US and to invest and buy more from the country.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, last month announced last month an additional US$100 billion in investment in the US.
Taiwan has long sought a broad bilateral trade deal with the US and is pursuing similar deals with US allies, especially as it seeks to wean itself off reliance on China.
Lai said Taiwan has already been signed trade and investment protection agreements with countries such as Britain and Canada, and also wants to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.
“By resolving trade barriers multilaterally, we can allow Taiwanese products to be sold around the world,” he added.
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