Cabinet Members, Who Are Internet Celebrities, Please Talk about the Sharp Decline in Export Orders

Cabinet Members, Who Are Internet Celebrities, Please Talk about the Sharp Decline in Export Orders

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

January 28, 2019

 Translation of an Excerpt

Recently, "Internet celebrity politics" is in vogue; Cabinet members vie for live broadcasting, playing Internet celebrities. However, in recent days, an important news story has been deliberately overlooked by officials; they all deliberately shy away. This issue is our country’s export orders suddenly declined in December last year by 10.5%, the greatest drop in the past 32 months, principally because of the impact of the conflict of US-China trade, in which Taiwan's industries usually enjoying an advantage have been affected. The growth rate of export orders represents the leading indicator for economic prosperity or decline; as to whether this big reversal can be addressed to Cabinet members, we suggest that they talk about the government’s counter-policies in the live broadcasts.

Since the Trump government launched a trade war against Mainland China last year, the Tsai government has always harbored a psychology of schadenfreude, believing the situation is developing to Taiwan’s advantage. This mentality is apparently only political calculations, lacking a more holistic economic-trade view. Unknown to the Tsai government, Mainland China is this country's largest export market, accounting for over 40% of export value. When the Mainland's economy suffers seriously, Taiwan's export industries are inevitably dragged down; we don’t have much room to escape by chance. Moreover, Taiwan's attempt to expand the ASEAN markets under its New Southward Policy has not achieved results; even if we slightly increased market share in the US and Japan, it would fundamentally not be able to make up for the loss in our exports to the Mainland market. Taiwan is an export-oriented country; once its exports decline, the economic engine may stall at any time.

We want to remind government officials that they should never deliberately "report the good news and evade sorrows" while vying to play Internet celebrities, leading the public to mistakenly believe that Taiwan is indeed situated outside the gun smoke of the US-China trade war, not being affected even an iota. In reality, fiscal and economic officials all lightly treat the sharp decline in export orders and exports, not touching the news about the drop. For instance, the fact that Taiwan’s annual trade surplus growth showed a sharp decrease of nearly 15% is not mentioned at all. Where did our trade surplus disappear to? Isn’t it worth a serious exploration?

Last November, our export orders declined by an annualized rate of 2.1%, abruptly making a reverse turn in our long climb of export trade. Last December, export orders deteriorated even more, declining by 15%, much higher than the four to six percent projected by the Ministry of Economic Affairs. As the US-China trade conflict turned into a protracted war, the situation would only get worse and worse. With the appearance of two "black swans," plus the dark clouds lingering over the performance in our New Southward Policy, how is the Su Cabinet going to lead us in this prolonged war?

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