People's Livelihoods Destined to Suffer If Trade De-Sinicized

  People's Livelihoods Destined to Suffer If Trade De-Sinicized

China Times Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

April 10, 2018

 Translation of an Excerpt

The United States and China are the two countries with the greatest trade volume in the world. When these two countries engaged in a trade war, it would be difficult for other countries to avoid stray bullets. For instance, when the US imposed additional tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, many countries, including Taiwan, would all be affected.

Logically speaking, in order to seek to be listed on the exemption roster for steel products to be exported to the US, we may, on the one hand, consult with the US to see which market would be used for exchange, or on the other hand, like the EU, appeal to the WTO to seek invoking the dispute settlement mechanism with the US, for further negotiations. Our government, however, has adopted a different and strange approach, i.e., starting to limit the importation of Mainland steel products to Taiwan, hoping to use the approach of reducing the “Mainland content” in Taiwan’s steel products to be exported to the US so as to persuade the US to include Taiwan in the exemption roster.

If this kind of "de-Sinicizing trade" policy is practicable, and if the US-China trade war is truly started in the future and the products would be expanded to include electronics, petrochemicals and other important merchandise, would Taiwan adopt the “de-Sinicizing trade" policy in all cases? The problem is, the Mainland market occupies 41% of Taiwan's exports, and the US market only 11.6%; if we would use a larger market in exchange for a smaller market, would it be a good deal? More seriously, in order to satisfy the United States, and deliberately limit Mainland merchandise to Taiwan, if the Mainland would adopt countermeasures and limit Taiwan’s exports to the Mainland, would we be able to sustain it?

The Mainland and the United States are both important trading partners for Taiwan; both markets are very important for Taiwan. If the Tsai government would choose sides, not only would Taiwan's economy probably be directly impacted at that time, our countrymen’s livelihoods would all be affected as a result. De-Sinicizing trade is a policy that is an impracticable deadend!

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