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Brexit and Taiwan: An Opportunity for a New Agreement or Wishful Thinking?

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The Implications of Brexit for East Asia

Abstract

For both Taiwan and the UK, the prospect of negotiating a bilateral free trade agreement post-Brexit may seem both attractive and achievable: Taiwan sees the UK as more sympathetic to its position than most EU members and it believes the UK will wish to sign new trade agreements quickly. But such views overlook considerable practical obstacles and differing objectives on both sides that will make early conclusion of a meaningful agreement difficult. Taiwan should instead concentrate on negotiating the comprehensive bilateral investment agreement already offered by the EU and which, once concluded, could also form the basis for a similar agreement with the UK.

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Notes

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    Michael I. Magcamit, Alexander C. Tan: Crouching tiger, lurking dragon, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, vol15/1, 2015.

  2. 2.

    At a lunch organized by the European Chamber of Commerce in Taipei in January 2009 the then UK Minister for Trade, Gareth Thomas, expressed British support for an EU-Taiwan FTA.

  3. 3.

    Theresa May: speech at Davos, 2017, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/01/theresa-may-at-davos-2017-her-speech-in-full/, retrieved 23 August 2017; HM Government: Future Customs Arrangements, A future partnership paper, 15 August 2017, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/637748/Future_customs_arrangements_-_a_future_partnership_paper.pdf, retrieved 22 August 2017.

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    World Trade Organization, http://stat.wto.org/CountryProfile/WSDBCountryPFView.aspx?Language=E&Country=E28%2cTW, retrieved 15 July 2016.

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    The first of these was signed with Panama in 2003. Although Panama broke diplomatic relations in 2017 when it switched its recognition to China, to date the FTA remains in force.

  6. 6.

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  19. 19.

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  20. 20.

    Michael Reilly: The Burial of Thatcherism? Chap. 2, above.

  21. 21.

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  27. 27.

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  28. 28.

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  29. 29.

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  33. 33.

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  34. 34.

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  35. 35.

    Cf. Chien-Huei Wu, ‘Toward an EU-Taiwan Bilateral Investment Treaty: A Roadmap’, in J. Chaisse (Ed.), China’s Three-Prong Investment Strategy: Bilateral, Regional, and Global Tracks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

  36. 36.

    EU Strategy on China, EU Council conclusions, 11,252/16, 18 July 2016.

  37. 37.

    Cf. Pia Eberhardt and Cecilia Olivet, Profiting from Injustice: How Law Firms, Arbitrators and Financiers Are Fuelling an Investment Arbitration Boom (Brussels: Corporate Europe Observatory and the Transnational Institute, 2012).

  38. 38.

    European Commission, ‘Commission Proposes New Investment Court System for TTIP and other EU Trade and Investment Negotiations’, 16 September 2015, http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-15-5651_en.htm, retrieved 25 October 2016.

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Reilly, M., Lee, Jy., Luo, Cm. (2018). Brexit and Taiwan: An Opportunity for a New Agreement or Wishful Thinking?. In: Huang, D., Reilly, M. (eds) The Implications of Brexit for East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0185-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0185-8_9

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