A new resolution formally calling on US President Barack Obama to move toward a free-trade
agreement (FTA) with Taiwan has been introduced into the US Congress. The resolution was
signed by Democrat Robert Anderson and Republicans Scott Garrett and John Culberson.
It urges Obama to make a free-trade agreement with Taiwan a "top priority" and to order the US
Trade Representative to "expedite negotiations."
"A US-Taiwan FTA will free Taiwan from China's economic stranglehold, which is, in fact, a
potent nonmilitary instrument of influence that China is forging to affect political choices in
Taiwan and to achieve the annexation of Taiwan," said Bob Yang, president of the Formosan
Association for Public Affairs.
During a congressional briefing last month, Andrews said that for both "economic and strategic" reasons, the time had arrived for an FTA with Taiwan. He said an FTA would act as an important affirmation that the US regarded the people of Taiwan as "a free, sovereign and independent people." Andrews said that an ECFA being negotiated with China was in his view more of a "cage than a framework." He further said, "Any duly elected government has the autonomy to negotiate any agreement it sees fit for its people, but that presupposes a negotiation that is free of coercion and is conducted in a truly bilateral, equivalent context. And that is most assuredly not the case." (Source: Taipei Times, May 10, 2010).