Taipei, March 11 (CNA) Establishing Taiwan-U.S. task forces to promote bilateral investment and work toward the removal of technical barriers to bilateral trade (TBT) is a critical step forward, a Taiwanese negotiator said Monday. “It’s been a very difficult job and a critical step forward for the two sides’ trade issues,” said Jenni Yang, deputy chief negotiator at Taiwan’s Office of Trade Negotiations under the Ministry of Economic Affairs. Such task forces would play an important role in removing trade barriers because of constant communications and negotiations between the two sides, she told reporters after a technical meeting with the U.S. counterparts earlier that day. The groups will likely discuss issues such as intellectual property, food safety, agricultural products, as well as medical devices and cosmetics, she said. However, there have been no conclusions on what issues will be touched on first and how often the meetings will be held, Yang said, adding that Taiwan prefers to meet every three months. The two task forces were set up after talks were held Sunday between Taiwan and the U.S. under a bilateral Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA), the first TIFA talks held in nearly six years. Roy Lee, deputy executive director of the Taiwan WTO & RTA Center under the Chung-hua institution for Economic Research, praised the forming of the two task forces as “a milestone.” “It means that the two sides can have more frequent meetings and that the Taiwan-U.S. trade interaction can now return to a normal and systematic track,” Lee told CNA. The TIFA was signed in 1994 as a framework for Taiwan-U.S. dialogue on trade-related issues in the absence of diplomatic ties, but talks have been suspended since 2007, largely due to the controversy over U.S. beef imports. In early 2012, the U.S. ratcheted up pressure on Taiwan to lift its ban on beef containing the leanness-enhancing drug ractopamine. The administration of President Ma Ying-jeou relented in the.
