ABSTRACT
The reform of foreign exchange and trade in 1958 opened the floodgates, allowing new forces to enter Taiwan's highly regulated foreign-trade sector. United States (US) foreign aid policies now shifted to speed up Taiwan's industrial transformation, and that meant increasing aggregate domestic savings and investment to replace American economic aid. In 1956 the US national budget fell further into deficit, forcing the Eisenhower administration to shift from a policy of direct aid to one of encouraging private enterprises in America to invest abroad. On December 30, Yen, Yin, Yang, Li, Haraldson, and several colleagues from the American Embassy met at Chen Cheng's official residence. The established critic, Wu Yannan, introduced a different ideologically-driven argument, arguing that a free-market economy was driven by individual “desire” for “profit.”A major problem was, however, that there already existed too many different laws and regulations concerning economic and financial affairs.
