Taiwan is trying to arrange a second meeting with the US under the Taiwan-US Initiative on 21st Century Trade, with the goal of signing several “interim agreements” by the end of the year, Minister Without Portfolio John Deng (鄧振中) said yesterday.
The proposed meeting was discussed last week with US Trade Representative Katherine Tai (戴琪) at the APEC summit in Thailand, but details such as the time and place have not yet been decided, Deng told a news conference in Taipei.
Deng, who was part of Taiwan’s delegation to the APEC summit, said he and Tai were satisfied with the outcome of the first physical meeting held by the initiative in New York earlier this month, and they agreed that the next one should be arranged as soon as possible.
Taiwan is hoping to sign several “interim trade pacts” with the US before the end of the year, but that would depend on the progress of the next round of trade talks under the initiative, he told reporters at the Executive Yuan.
The initiative was launched in June, in the wake of Taiwan’s exclusion from the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, and is aimed at creating a pathway for new bilateral trade agreements with “high-standard commitments and economically meaningful outcomes,” the two sides said.
The first interim trade agreements could be signed once the two sides are satisfied that they could achieve results in areas such as ensuring trade facilitation, establishing good regulatory practices and strong anti-corruption standards, and enhancing bilateral trade between their small and medium-sized enterprises, Deng said.
At the APEC summit, the Taiwanese delegation lobbied for the country’s inclusion in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), he said.
In response, the representatives of all but one of the CPTPP member states said that the partnership would first review the UK’s membership application, which would serve as a standard for the evaluation of other applications, Deng said.
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