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According to the Taipei Times, the Minister of Economic Affairs talked about adopting the Swiss Formula during a press conference held yesterday afternoon. The World Trade Organization trade talks were attended by trade ministers from 13 nations, including the US and many EU states.
Ho Mei-yueh said the Taiwan government was to adopt the Swiss Formula for many trade sectors, possibly including bicycle production. This would even out tariff peaks, high tariffs and tariff escalation, which she said will boost Taiwan’s exports.
Taiwan exports five million bicycles a year.
According to the WTO website, the Swiss Formula is "a special kind of harmonizing method. It uses a single mathematical formula to produce: a narrow range of final tariff rates from a wide set of initial tariffs; a maximum final rate, no matter how high the original tariff was; [and] the required cuts are then divided into equal annual steps."
The formula was proposed by Switzerland in the 197379 Tokyo Round negotiations.
"But Switzerland opposes using this method in the current agriculture negotiations; it prefers the Uruguay Round approach, while Uruguay prefers the Swiss formula…" reports the WTO.
