Ma: Taiwan’s Trade Opportunities with the US Slipping Away over Unresolved Beef Imports Issue

Ma: Taiwan’s Trade Opportunities with the US Slipping Away over Unresolved Beef Imports Issue

Source: United Daily News
June 27, 2012

President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) posted an article on his Facebook page in which he wrote that the economic cooperation between Taiwan and the United States, Taiwan’s third largest trading partner, “has remained at a standstill for the last five years” because of the issue of US beef imports (containing ractopamine). President Ma warned that facing South Korea and other economies in East Asia emerging as leading economic powers, Taiwan was at a crucial crossroads right now, saying that “as time goes by, we should never allow ourselves to sit idly by and watch Taiwan’s opportunities slip away little by little while other countries move ahead of us one day after another.”
 
President Ma said that the government’s direction in developing the country’s economy was very clear. “My most important task is to remove trade barriers for the pioneering business entrepreneurs of Taiwan” so that they are able to have the opportunity to compete fairly with their rivals in other countries, he stressed.
 
President Ma also noted that the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) had officially explained to the public that as long as Taiwan could resolve the US beef imports issue, the long-suspended negotiations under TIFA (Trade and Investment Framework Agreement) would be resumed. He said that the government would stick to its four policy principles to conditionally lift the ban on US beef imports and remove trade barrier between the two countries, namely, “formulate regulations on permissible quantities of ractopamine residue, retain the ban on imports of foreign pork containing ractopamine residue, establish compulsory indication of origin on the labeling of both raw and cooked beef products, and exclude animal offal from the list of permitted items for import.”
 

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