Taitung County Mayor Rao Ching-ling (饒慶鈴) and five agricultural groups attended the Straits Forum in June to lobby for the resumption of pineapple custard apple exports to China — and returned home to face government sanctions.
The Mainland Affairs Council's deputy minister, Liang Wen-jie (梁文傑), dismissed the fruit as something "almost no Taiwanese eat, a product entirely dependent on Beijing's goodwill." The remark drew sharp criticism not only for its condescension toward farmers, but for its apparent ignorance of basic economics and logistics.
Comparative Advantage Is Not a Political Slogan
Taiwan's agricultural export model was built on the same principles that drove its industrial rise: specialization, open markets, and geographic efficiency. Economists from Adam Smith to David Ricardo have long established that trade — even between rivals — maximizes social welfare when each party focuses on what it does best.
Pineapple custard apples are one of those cases. Taiwan's soil and climate give it a near-absolute advantage in cultivating the fruit. The problem is not the economics — it is the geography. Fresh produce has a short shelf life. China's proximity dramatically reduces transit time and cold-chain risk. No policy declaration changes that biological fact.
Liang's logic, taken to its end, would condemn Taiwan's semiconductor exports by the same standard: TSMC's customers don't live in Taiwan either.
What Trump Did — and What Lai's Government Won't
When China weaponized soybean imports during the US-China trade war, American Midwest farmers faced serious income losses. President Donald Trump did not lecture them for being dependent on a foreign buyer. He subsidized their losses directly through agricultural relief funds and then secured commitments for tens of billions of dollars in Chinese agricultural purchases as part of the Phase One trade deal.
The contrast with Taipei is stark. Rather than cushioning the blow for farmers who lost market access or opening new channels, the Lai Ching-te (賴清德) administration has moved to punish the local official who tried to find a workaround. Officials in air-conditioned offices are telling sun-beaten farmers that their survival strategies are politically unacceptable.
Distant Markets Cannot Fill Nearby Gaps
The government has repeatedly cited export successes — pineapples to Australia, pitaya to Japan, mangoes to France — as evidence that new markets can substitute for China. In practice, cracking a new export market for perishable goods takes years of investment: building consumer awareness, meeting stringent phytosanitary standards, and deploying high-end cold-chain infrastructure across oceanic distances.
None of that can absorb, in any near-term timeframe, the volume that geographic proximity and shared food culture once sustained. Farmers facing price collapses need effective demand today, not a marketing campaign for next decade.
A Promise Made, Then Forgotten
Five years ago, then-Vice President Lai Ching-te traveled to Taitung after China first suspended pineapple custard apple imports. He told farmers he loved the fruit and promised they would "never be left alone." They were Taiwan's pride.
Today, under his administration, the same farmers and the same fruit have been labeled politically suspect — their attempts to recover their livelihoods recast as capitulation to Beijing.
Framing national security and farmers' livelihoods as mutually exclusive is not a defense policy. It is a failure of governance — and one that the people working in Taiwan's fields are unlikely to forget.
