U.S., Taiwan, Europe and Japan Discuss Supply Chain Restructuring to “Decouple” from China

The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), along with Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs, the European Economic and Trade Office (EETO), and the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association, is co-hosting the “Reorganizing the Supply Chain: Promoting Resilience Among Like-Minded Partners Forum” this Friday, September 4. They hope to find “like-minded” democracies to join the global supply chain shift in the post-epidemic era.

As the neo-coronary pneumonia epidemic continues to spread and geopolitical uncertainty continues to impact global supply chains, AIT and the Republic of China External Trade Development Council will intensify supply chain restructuring, particularly in the communications and healthcare sectors, according to the forum statement.

The statement emphasized that partners are encouraged to move their supply chains out of mainland China and find partners with similar economic philosophies to work together to develop new supply chains based on shared values and standards to build crisis-resilient supply chain networks and ensure supply chain security from political coercion.

In addition, the Forum emphasized strengthening supply chain resilience in priority regions with similar philosophies, such as India, ASEAN, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, among others, in the Visegrad Group.

The Trump administration has moved on several fronts to rebalance the U.S.-China economic relationship, including actions aimed at ensuring that key products are produced in the U.S., as well as promoting the purchase of U.S.-produced goods and incentives to persuade U.S. companies to support local supply chains.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin also said in June that the U.S. and Chinese economies would “decouple” if U.S. companies could not compete fairly in China.

Beijing has denounced this as a political attempt and said that decoupling the world’s two largest economies will not work.

This shared value will guide us in reshaping the supply chain of the future,” said AIT Taipei Office Director Li Yingjie at the forum. Helping economies, industries, and businesses build secure supply chains requires coordination and effort from all of us.”

Taiwan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Wu Zhao-sheep said that Taiwan will work with like-minded partners to build mutually beneficial exhibition relationships and achieve mutual prosperity, rather than coercion, exploitation and expansion.

He did not address China and did not mention supply chain restructuring, but rather emphasized building resilient supply chains with ASEAN to better address the challenges of the new coronavirus epidemic.