Kerry: Trump did not contact State Dept. prior to calls

Her call with Trump on Friday last week was the first by a United States president or president-elect with a Taiwanese leader since then-US president Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979.

There are many pressure points China can push to express its anger at Donald Trump’s call with Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen last week, including luring away more of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies and ramping up military deployments in the Taiwan Strait.

Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into. Beijing media went so far as to say that Trump is inexperienced in diplomacy, so it was really Taiwan that tricked Trump and it’s Taiwan that needs to be taught a lesson.

“Trump may dislike, distrust the diplomatic establishment in Washington D.C., and aspire to rework USA foreign policies” China Daily wrote in a December 6 editorial.

Since 1979, as The Economist puts it, every USA president “has accepted the diplomatic fiction that there is but “One China”, and that the respective governments on the mainland and in Taiwan are rival claimants to the glory of ruling over the unified nation”.

Dr Wu Shang-Su, a research fellow with the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, noted that it is “unlikely that Trump could upset the current framework defining US-China ties that are underpinned by the three joint communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act”.

“I do not foresee major policy shifts in the near future because we all see the value of stability in the region”, Ms. Tsai told the USA reporters in Taipei on a trip sponsored by the USA -backed East-West Center.

On Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said progress with the Chinese could be “undermined” by a flare-up over the sovereignty of Taiwan, the self-governing island the US broke diplomatic ties with in 1979.

“We’re not the enemies of China”, said the former speaker.

“Pressing China on Taiwan won’t likely bring them to the table on North Korea and currency”, he wrote on Twitter.

But the key danger, of course, is that a full-blown trade war kicks off, and you get a 1930s-style spiral into tit-for-tat, highly-damaging protectionism. The Chinese directed their ire at Taiwan and not at Trump.

According to accounts from both sides, Tsai called Trump to congratulate him on winning the USA presidential election and Trump extended his congratulations on her electoral victory early this year.

Vice President-elect Mike Pence has utilized State Department briefings ahead of calls with foreign leaders but, according to Kerry, Trump himself has not.

China has criticized Trump’s call, registering a complaint with the White House. When President Obama broke with decades of US policy and extended diplomatic recognition to a murderous dictatorship in Cuba, the foreign-policy establishment swooned. So, while it was a surprise to China and many in the United States government, Trump’s advisers are claiming it was calculated. Others have called it a rash and provocative move, possibly one not particularly thought out by the President-elect and his small team.

Whether because Trump was in fact signaling a pre-inauguration change in USA policy or because he couldn’t stand the idea that the world knew he made a rookie mistake, other members of the transition team soon were suggesting the phone call was a part of a careful Trump strategy.

Unlike her predecessor, Tsai, democratically elected in May, has not accepted a previously negotiated agreement with China that recognizes a unified China but allows Taiwan to elect its own government and manage its local affairs.

Stephen Yates, a national security official under President George W. Bush, told the Post that Taiwan was on the Trump transition team’s list of foreign leaders to reach out to “very early on”. The U.S. and China are the world’s two largest economies with bilateral trade in goods and services reaching almost $660 billion previous year.

However, the Foreign Ministry does not wield the same power as the party leadership and a more meaningful reaction would come from that office or from the Chinese military.