May 08, 2018
The Trump Administration's Policy Toward Taiwan
Less than a month after the November 2016 election and several weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration, U.S. policy toward Taiwan faced an early defining moment. On December 2, thepresident-elect received a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen. The first direct presidential communication since 1979, the telephone connection appears to have been carefully orchestrated. The next week Trump said he was reconsidering the 40-year-old “one China” policy built on three U.S.-China joint communiqués, the Taiwan Relations Act, and other major policy statements. Yet in his first official phone call with China’s leader, President Trump reassured President Xi Jinping that the United States remained committed to the one-China policy. These early muscle movements of Taiwan policy revealed some of the characteristic negotiating tactics of both the author of The Art of the Deal and the Chinese government. President Trump, seeking to improve his bargaining position over Taiwan, provoked an early test with Beijing to announce that the United States would henceforth be less predictable than in the past. Meanwhile, China made clear that the only sure path to fruitful cooperation would require strict adherence to Chinese principles. These moves presaged future tension and competition, given that the Trump administration had every intention to seek peace but prevent coercion against the people of Taiwan: in other words, the new president accepted the one-China policy of the United States and not the one-China
Read the Full Article at NBR
More from CNAS
-
The Quad Plus the Philippines
Reports
Introduction As the United States increasingly looks to multilateral partnerships to meet challenges in the Indo-Pacific, the Quad (Australia, India, Japan, and the United Sta...
By Lisa Curtis, Evan Wright & Nathaniel Schochet
-
Free Expression Encore: The Best of 2024
Podcast
Free Expression's final episode of 2024 features some of Wall Street Journal editor at large Gerry Baker's best interviews of the year, including conversations with Richard Fo...
By Richard Fontaine
-
Trump 2.0 and Security in Asia
Video
Donald Trump is bringing his "America First" agenda back to U.S. foreign policy. What could this mean for Japan and the partners in Asia? Akira Igata, an Adjunct Senior Fellow...
By Akira Igata
-
Syria: What Happened and What Comes Next
Video
After more than a decade of civil war involving major interventions from foreign powers, over the past week a rebel alliance incredibly rapidly gained control of city after ci...
By Richard Fontaine
