Donald Trump’s transition team carefully prepared for his recent controversial phone call with Taiwan’s President, according to a report published Sunday evening in The Washington Post.
The President-elect had brushed off the Friday conversation as routine, rather than a breach of decades-long protocol. “The President of Taiwan CALLED ME today to wish me congratulations on winning the Presidency,” Trump tweeted immediately afterward. “Thank you!”
The Post, however, called the flippancy of that assertion into disrepute, reporting that the chat had been “planned weeks ahead by staffers and Taiwan specialists on both sides, according to people familiar with the plans.”
“Immediately after Trump won the Nov. 8 election, his staffers compiled a list of foreign leaders with whom to arrange calls,” the paper also reported.
“Very early on, Taiwan was on that list,” Stephen Yates, a George W. Bush national security official and East Asia expert, told the Post.
Yates added: “Once the call was scheduled, I was told that there was a briefing for President-elect Trump. They knew that there would be reaction and potential blowback.”
It was the first communication between American and Taiwainese leaders since 1979, and elicited a sharp reaction from Beijing. Chinese Foreign Ministry officials subsequently protested the phone call with American diplomats.
“The Chinese side in Beijing and Washington lodged solemn representations with the relevant side in the US,” Foreign Minister Spokesperson Lu Kang said, over the weekend. “The world is very clear on China’s solemn position. The US side, including President-elect Trump’s team, is very clear about China’s solemn position on this issue.”
China has considered Taiwan a renegade part of the country since 1949, when the Communist Party took over in Beijing. The island played host and served as a base to nationalists who fled the takeover.
The US recognized Taiwan as the legitimate government of mainland China until 1979.
During the presidential campaign, Trump portrayed himself as, generally, less enthusiastic than Hillary Clinton about global brinksmanship and overseas military adventurism.
“What we should do is focus on ISIS. We should not be focusing on Syria,” he said in October, for example, referring to Clinton’s calls to ouster Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. “You’re going to end up in World War III over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton.”
Trump also hit out at Clinton’s criticism of his alleged closeness with Russian President Vladimir Putin and her policy toward Moscow by repeatedly asking: “Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get along with Russia?”
On China, however, Trump is currently surrounded by aides who believe the US should adopt a much more confrontational approach–especially as far as Washington’s support of Taiwan is concerned. As the Post said Sunday, this coterie includes “incoming [White House] chief of staff Reince Priebus,” the current chair of the Republican National Committee.
Two other of these advisers include Peter Navarro and Alexander Gray. In a Foreign Policy article published last month, the pair called Taiwan a “beacon of democracy in Asia” and said it was “the most militarily vulnerable US partner anywhere in the world.”
The Republican Party, in general, seems to back this shift, as a whole. As the Post noted, those close to Trump inserted more hardline pro-Taiwan language into Republicans’ platform, in July, at the party’s national convention.
“We salute the people of Taiwan, with whom we share the values of democracy, human rights, a free market economy, and the rule of law,” the platform stated. It also stated that “China’s behavior has negated the optimistic language of our last platform concerning our future relations with China.”
“Yates, who helped write that portion of the platform, said Trump made clear at the time that he wanted to recalibrate relationships around the world and that the US posture toward China was ‘a personal priority,'” the Post also remarked.
Vice President-elect Mike Pence downplayed the importance of Friday’s phone call with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen, claiming on Sunday that “this was a moment of courtesy.”
“The president-elect talked to President Xi two weeks ago in the same manner. It was not a discussion about policy,” Pence said–even though the decision to stage the phone call was itself substantive.
“He took the call, accepted her congratulations and good wishes and it was precisely that,” Pence also said.
On Twitter, however, Trump hit out at his critics on Sunday, putting the focus squarely on policy.
“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 their country (the US doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?” he asked. “I don’t think so!”
As the Post noted Sunday, the US doesn’t allow Chinese products to be imported tax-free.
China has also warned that any decision by Trump to impose additional tariffs will be met with countervailing measures. A “currency manipulator” label, as Trump suggested, would trigger additional levies.
“A batch of Boeing orders will be replaced by Airbus,” a newspaper published by the Chinese Communist Party said last month, after the election. “US auto and iPhone sales in China will suffer a setback, and US soybean and [corn] imports will be halted. China can also limit the number of Chinese students studying in the US.”
The same publication, The Global Times, scoffed at Friday’s phone call, characterizing it as naive.
“It seems that Trump is still taking advantage of his perceived fickleness and unpredictability to make some choppy waves in the Taiwan Straits to see if he can gain some bargaining chips before he is sworn in,” it said.
“He has zero diplomatic experience and is unaware of the repercussions of shaking up Sino-US. relations,” the publication added.
