Taiwan and the Trans-Pacific Partnership

This report grew out of one of the first research projects I took on after becoming Director of the Center for International Trade and Investment (CITI) at Universitas Pelita Harapan in late 2014. Commissioned through Taiwan’s trade representation in Jakarta, it examined what the Trans-Pacific Partnership could mean for Taiwan and its place in the wider East Asian economy.

Writing in December 2014, while the negotiations were still under way, we saw the TPP as a potentially significant departure from the region’s existing trade agreements. Its ambitions extended beyond tariffs to services, investment and domestic regulation. For Taiwan, exclusion could therefore carry costs that went well beyond missing out on preferential access for its exports.

My central argument was that Taiwan should pursue participation while preparing for the possibility that the politics would keep it outside. Bilateral agreements with participating economies and domestic regulatory reform offered practical ways to reduce the costs of exclusion. Waiting for an invitation was not a strategy.

The paper also asks a broader question: what kind of society did Taiwan want closer economic integration to help it build? Trade policy should support productivity and living standards, with support for people who bear the costs of adjustment. Taiwan’s democratic institutions and the distinctive society they sustain were central to that discussion. These were the choices we were examining in 2014, before the eventual fate of the original TPP was known.

Read the paper

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and Taiwan’s Place in the Broader East-Asian Regionalism: Some Political-Economy and Strategic Considerations, December 2014.

Download the report (PDF, 28 pages)

Read the companion study: Taiwan and RCEP.

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