This Saturday, Taiwanese voters will head to the polls to voice their opinion on four referendum questions. One of those questions bears on US-Taiwan relations in particular.

In August 2020, President Tsai Ing-wen announced that Taiwan would end its years-long ban on imports of pork containing ractopamine, a leanness-inducing feed supplement given to many pigs on US livestock farms. Pork from ractopamine-treated pigs has been proven safe for human consumption; the ban was aimed first and foremost at protecting Taiwan’s own pig farmers. Unfortunately for Taiwan, the ban became a major hurdle in the way of advancing trade relations with the United States. In a report 2019 report for the Project 2049 Institute, AEI’s Dan Blumenthal and I described the problem:

A key sticking point on beef and pork for American and Taiwanese negotiators has been whether barriers to imports would be addressed prior to, or as part of, free trade negotiations. The American position has long been that Taiwan must drop the barriers before opening negotiations, as those barriers were not erected based on science or reason, but based on popular passion and a desire to protect Taiwan’s pork industry from overseas competition. American trade negotiators believe the starting point for negotiations should be the status quo ante — they are opposed to making concessions in return for barriers that never should have been erected in the first place. Taiwan’s negotiators, however, object to unilaterally dropping the politically popular barriers to beef and pork imports without securing concurrent deliverables to present to voters. It may be the case that these barriers should never have been erected, but domestic political realities in Taiwan today cannot be denied.

Last year, Tsai took the bold
step of dropping the ban absent an American commitment to deepen trade. She saw
in the Trump administration a vanishing opportunity to secure a free trade
agreement (FTA) with the United States, which has been a priority for the Tsai
administration for years. Tsai said as much during last year’s announcement,
noting that “Taiwan’s economy now stands at a historical turning point” and
that Taiwan “must take advantage of this strategic opportunity to push past
obstacles, find a viable path forward, and embrace new global economic
circumstances.” She said plainly that Taiwanese regulations “have become an
obstacle for furthering Taiwan-US economic cooperation” and indicated her
belief that addressing tensions over pork would “be an important starting point
for more comprehensive Taiwan-US economic cooperation.”

Unfortunately for both Taipei
and Washington, the Trump administration left Tsai hanging, as has the Joe Biden
administration. Now, the Taiwanese will have an opportunity to vote for a
renewed ban. Taiwanese voters have a right to be frustrated that Tsai’s play
did not lead to negotiations on a free trade agreement, as many on both sides
of the Pacific hoped. But they should also consider that voting in favor of
banning American pork treated with ractopamine will reintroduce tension in
US-Taiwan ties at a time when they have experienced healthy growth, even if
that growth has been disappointing in the economic realm.

Regardless of the results on
Saturday, however, it is past time for the Biden administration to step up to
the plate on trade with Taiwan. As Dan and I argued in our report, a US-Taiwan
FTA would be relatively easy to negotiate and would come with positive economic
and strategic outcomes for both countries.

In a speech in Jakarta on December 4, Secretary of State Antony Blinken set out the Biden administration’s vision for the Indo-Pacific. According to Blinken, the third pillar of that vision is to “promote broad-based prosperity.” What better way to start implementing that vision than by expanding trade relations with Taiwan — one of America’s oldest and most threatened partners in the region?

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