Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) yesterday held a livestreamed opposition leaders’ summit to discuss major national issues, including political reform, recall campaigns and the economic challenges posed by US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs.
On the issue of whether to push for a no-confidence vote against the Cabinet, Chu said Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) is merely a shield and serves at President William Lai’s (賴清德) pleasure, adding that “Lai the dictator” needs to “feel remorse and change.”
The KMT’s stance is that no display of people’s power is off the table, including a vote of no confidence, recall or impeachment, he said.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
The party has an ordered strategy to remove Lai and is not targeting merely the Cabinet, he added.
Huang said that dismissing the Cabinet “will not save Taiwan,” or stop Lai who “wants to become an autocrat.”
The TPP will support KMT lawmakers facing the threat of recalls, which he said was led by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).
It will not allow the DPP to revert the nation to single-party dictatorship through indiscriminate recall campaigns, he added.
The DPP government must be denied a legislative majority since it is “already doing whatever it wants,” despite being a minority in the legislature, he said.
Asked whether the KMT and the TPP share common goals and the extent to which the two parties can cooperate, Chu said the two parties have distinct agenda and policy goals that allow room for collaboration at the legislative and local level.
The two also discussed the economic challenges posed by Trump’s tariffs.
In response to US tariff threats, Lai announced plans to increase investment in the US, and his administration endorsed an additional US$100 billion investment in the US pledged last month by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), but that has not helped exempt Taiwan from Trump’s tariffs, Chu said.
With big tech companies, including TSMC, Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) and Wistron Corp (緯創), teaming up with Nvidia to invest US$500 billion to produce artificial intelligence servers, the question for the Lai administration is: “What are we getting in return?” Chu said.
Huang said the DPP has yet to put forward an impact assessment report on the tariffs since Trump announced them.
The opposition would create an impact assessment platform comprising academics, former economic officials, industry representatives and local government heads to gauge the impact of the US tariffs over the next six months, he said.
Government negotiations with the US on tariffs should not result in deals that compare unfavorably with those of Taiwan’s main trade rivals, such as Japan and South Korea, or the ramifications would be “catastrophic” for Taiwan’s industrial sector, he said.
Taiwan should sign a free-trade agreement with the US to mitigate the negative impact of tariffs, he added.
Later yesterday, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) accused the opposition of “rumormongering” by implying that the DPP had not adopted a more proactive stance in addressing the tariff issue.
Lai and Cho have held a series of exchanges with representatives from various sectors since Trump announced the tariffs.
It is “regrettable” that the opposition has resorted to a “mudslinging” political stunt in the name of unity and public interest, Wu said.
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