Trump’s Team Plays Down Significance of Taiwan Phone Call

“The people advising Trump on Taiwan were pleased with the results (of the call)”, Mr Daly says.

“I don’t think there was any strategy behind it and I think the effort to push out a story line or a narrative that this was actually a well-thought-about change in direction is highly dubious”, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, told the BBC, saying conflicting accounts made the exchange sound haphazard. Under the “one China” policy, the US acknowledges the Beijing government’s claim that Taiwan is part of China.

Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Trump’s conversation does not signal any change to long-standing US policy on cross-strait issues.

Indeed, advisers explicitly warned last month that relations with China were in for a shake-up.

Mr Trump and his Vice President-elect Michael Pence did initially downplay the conversation as a courtesy call initiated by Taiwan that was not about policy.

Douglas Paal, a former director of the American Institute in Taiwan, which unofficially represents USA interests in Taipei, said it was too soon to judge whether Trump was going to lead that shift, or if the incident was just a “complicated accident”. There was a time when Beijing and Taipei each claimed to be the sole legitimate government of both the Chinese mainland and the island across the Taiwan Strait.

“Any business that leaves our country for another country, fires its employees, builds a new factory or plant in the other country, and then thinks it will sell its product back into the US without retribution or effect, is WRONG!” he said. Director and associate professor in the school of diplomacy and worldwide relations at Steon Hall Unviersity. Apparently Rachel Maddow, who as a good progressive really ought to be celebrating this phone call to the head of democracy with no guns and a world-leading national health insurance program, said on national TV that “this is how wars start”. The State Department should press for Taiwan’s admission to the United Nations and other global bodies.

For the moment, however, the call gives Tsai a foreign-policy win as she struggles with domestic setbacks.

President Barack Obama’s administration reaffirmed the US’ one-China policy on Monday in the wake of president-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with Taiwan leader Tsai Ing-wen last Friday. I’m not sure how that benefits the United States relationship with Taiwan.

The tweets come several days after Trump’s conversation with Taiwan’s president, which broke years of United States diplomatic protocol and risked a rift with China.

“As a loyal friend of America, Taiwan has merited our strong support, including free trade agreement status, the timely sale of defensive arms including technology to build diesel submarines, and full participation in the World Health Organization, International Civil Aviation Organization, and other multilateral institutions”, the document said.

Trump has vowed to formally declare China a “currency manipulator” on the first day of his presidency, which would oblige the US Treasury to open negotiations with Beijing on allowing the renminbi to rise.

Pence also told NBC that Trump is preparing to take office on January 20, and “we’ll deal with policy at that time”.

Priebus is reported to have visited Taiwan with a Republican delegation in 2011 and in October 2015, meeting Tsai before she was elected president.

“The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency”.

Tsai plans to stop in the USA on her way to visit Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador, among the island’s handful of diplomatic allies.

But since the 12-minute call, the highest level of U.S. -Taiwan dialogue since the 1970s, China has blustered mainly at the United States rather than at Taiwan.

The telephone conversation was the first by a USA president-elect or president with a Taiwanese leader since President Jimmy Carter switched diplomatic recognition to China from Taiwan in 1979, acknowledging Taiwan as part of “one China”.

Trump and Pence have had more than 50 phone calls with foreign leaders so far.

“I don’t care if we insult the Chinese”, he added. Trump, who vowed during his campaign he would label China a currency manipulator, did not appear to be taking a conciliatory approach on Sunday.

“Having lived in Taiwan twice and having lived in China once, there’s a little too much hyperventilating about this one”, he said.

China has identified Taiwan as its most important core interest. Yes, Trump’s protectionist trade rhetoric toward China (and other countries) is deplorable, and Congress should staunchly resist his threats to impose choking tariffs on Chinese exports.