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nealer and fimbres • taiwan and regional trade organizations<br />
This essay provides an overall assessment of Taiwan’s prospects for<br />
joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and recommends a series<br />
of potential options for how Taiwan can overcome the challenges related<br />
to gaining membership. The first section offers a brief overview of regional<br />
trade architecture in the Asia-Pacific region and Taiwan’s place within that<br />
architecture. The second section details the challenges Taiwan faces in joining<br />
the TPP, both domestically and externally. The third and fourth sections<br />
describe the implications of Taiwan joining or being excluded from the TPP<br />
for cross-strait relations and U.S.-Taiwan relations, respectively. The essay<br />
concludes by identifying a path forward for Taiwan and offering policy<br />
recommendations that the island’s leaders can use in their arguments that<br />
joining the TPP is in Taiwan’s best interests.<br />
understanding the asia-pacific’s trade<br />
architecture and taiwan’s trade relations<br />
The Asia-Pacific’s Trade Architecture<br />
Asian regional trade agreements—twelve and counting—range in scope<br />
from the world’s most far-reaching trade agreement (the Australia–New Zealand<br />
Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement) to narrower preferential deals<br />
(such as the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement). The Asia-Pacific is also one of the<br />
most prolific regions when it comes to free trade agreements (FTA). Yet some<br />
have characterized these agreements as a “noodle bowl” of commitments and<br />
called into question their tangible benefits due to the effects of overlapping<br />
regulations and trade diversion. 1<br />
There is debate about whether the proliferation of regional agreements<br />
has contributed to the inability to make progress on multilateral trade<br />
liberalization, especially as the Doha Round agenda recedes to a vanishing<br />
point. 2 Concerns about the expansion of FTAs focus on the potential to<br />
undermine existing multilateral trade agreements. But the truth is that<br />
the companies most interested in open trade and investment regimes are<br />
indifferent about the package in which such benefits are delivered. The trend<br />
1 “Asian Free Trade Agreements: Untangling the Noodle Bowl,” Asian Development Bank, August 8,<br />
2013 u http://www.adb.org/features/free-trade-untangling-asia-s-noodle-bowl; and Masahiro<br />
Kawai and Ganeshan Wignaraja, ed., Asia’s Free Trade Agreements: How Is Business Responding?<br />
(Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011).<br />
2 World Economic Forum, “Mega-Regional Trade Agreements: Game-Changers or Costly<br />
Distractions for the World Trading System?” July 2014 u http://www3.weforum.org/docs/<br />
GAC/2014/WEF_GAC_TradeFDI_MegaRegionalTradeAgreements_Report_2014.pdf.<br />
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