Taiwan’s current blitz to win US support for the nation’s entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact is having no impact whatsoever, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) economist Derek Scissors told a Washington conference on Thursday.
Asked if personal TPP lobbying by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) and several business delegations was helping, Scissors replied: “No one is paying any attention.”
“This is not a slight to Taiwan,” he said. “There is a lot the US has to do on trade and the TPP is going to be a political brawl. When it is over, no one is going to remember what Taiwanese delegations were saying before the brawl started.”
Scissors, a specialist in Asian economic issues, was addressing a George Washington University conference on Taiwan and the TPP.
He said the US was going to “wake up politically” sometime in 2017 and ask: “OK, who’s next?”
“And what you want is for Taiwan to have its best offer ready at that time,” Scissors said. “It’s not lobbying, it’s not saying: ‘Look at me — everybody pay attention.’ Nothing matters until the negotiating starts, because at that time, they press a reset button.”
Scissors said the TPP political negotiations were so daunting for the US that no one has time to bother with Taiwan now and would not have time until the actual negotiations for the nation’s entry into the TPP have started.
Scissors said that TPP rules were still being negotiated and the big question is whether it ends up as an economically weak agreement that did not liberalize trade very much, or a strong agreement that did liberalize trade.
“The punch line is that it would be much better for Taiwan if TPP was weak,” he said.
“History tells me that Taiwan could not respond to a strong TPP without suffering economic damage,” Scissors said. “It would offer opportunities, but also threats.”
The main thing that would affect Taiwan’s membership would be China’s membership, he said.
Death row inmate Huang Lin-kai (黃麟凱), who was convicted for the double murder of his former girlfriend and her mother, is to be executed at the Taipei Detention Center tonight, the Ministry of Justice announced. Huang, who was a military conscript at the time, was convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend, surnamed Wang (王), and the murder of her mother, after breaking into their home on Oct. 1, 2013. Prosecutors cited anger over the breakup and a dispute about money as the motives behind the double homicide. This is the first time that Minister of Justice Cheng Ming-chien (鄭銘謙) has
Ferry operators are planning to provide a total of 1,429 journeys between Taiwan proper and its offshore islands to meet increased travel demand during the upcoming Lunar New Year holiday, the Maritime and Port Bureau said yesterday. The available number of ferry journeys on eight routes from Saturday next week to Feb. 2 is expected to meet a maximum transport capacity of 289,414 passengers, the bureau said in a news release. Meanwhile, a total of 396 journeys on the "small three links," which are direct ferries connecting Taiwan's Kinmen and Lienchiang counties with China's Fujian Province, are also being planned to accommodate
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
TRANSPORT CONVENIENCE: The new ticket gates would accept a variety of mobile payment methods, and buses would be installed with QR code readers for ease of use New ticketing gates for the Taipei metro system are expected to begin service in October, allowing users to swipe with cellphones and select credit cards partnered with Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC), the company said on Tuesday. TRTC said its gates in use are experiencing difficulty due to their age, as they were first installed in 2007. Maintenance is increasingly expensive and challenging as the manufacturing of components is halted or becoming harder to find, the company said. Currently, the gates only accept EasyCard, iPass and electronic icash tickets, or one-time-use tickets purchased at kiosks, the company said. Since 2023, the company said it
RSS