Claims that President William Lai (賴清德) met with business leaders to help resolve tariff issues are false, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said yesterday, adding that the government maintains close communication with the US and is steadily working toward bilateral economic cooperation.
The Chinese-language Mirror Media magazone reported that Lai had repeatedly invited top business leaders in Taiwan for secret talks since US President Donald Trump announced “reciprocal” tariffs in April.
Lai hoped that the businesses would form a group to invest in the US in a bid to win a reduced US tariff rate, the report said.
Photo: George Tsorng, Taipei Times
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) rejected the plan and said “no official assistance from Taiwan is needed,” Mirror Media reported.
The situation described in the report is completely false, Kuo said, calling on the media to fact-check stories before they are published.
The government maintains close communications with the US in many fields, and continues to steadily promote bilateral industrial cooperation in economic and trade affairs, she said.
An AIT spokesperson yesterday told the Central News Agency that the report was “completely incorrect.”
The AIT is working closely with Taiwan’s government and private enterprises to promote bilateral trade and investment, the AIT spokesperson said.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS