	taiwan plans new tariff cuts taiwan plans another round of deep tariff cuts this year to help narrow its  surplus with the u s a senior economic planner said wang chao ming vice chairman of the council for economic planning and development told reuters taiwan would further reduce import tariffs on products sometime in the second half of this year cuts of up to pct on those items were made last year and wang said further cuts would go much deeper we have to speed up liberalisation and cut import tariffs faster and more substantially he said the united states taiwan s main trading partner has said the island s import tariffs still ranging from a high of almost pct were unacceptable it has criticised the cuts as too selective taiwan s  surplus with the united states hit billion dlrs last year the surplus has boosted foreign exchange reserves to billion dlrs which wang said made taiwan a target for u s protectionism wang said the  surplus and the reserves weakened taiwan s position in talks with washington over export quotas particularly for shoes textiles and machine tools which are among the island s main export earners a special taiwanese  delegation leaves for washington tomorrow to try to renegotiate an agreement signed last year limiting exports of taiwan textiles under the accord taiwan s textile export growth was limited to pct each year until taipei has said it is losing markets to south korea and hong kong which were given more generous terms reuter 
