President-elect Donald Trump kicked off a fresh controversy Friday when he spoke to President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan in a major departure from America’s decades-old China policy that could earn him a rebuke from Beijing, or a protest at the least.
There have been no known contacts between a US president, or a president-elect, and a leader of Taiwan, which China counts as a province, since the US broke diplomatic relations with the island nation in 1978, in pursuit of one-China policy.
In a readout of the call with President Tsai, Trump transition team said the two leaders “noted the close economic, political, and security ties exists between Taiwan and the United States”. Trump also congratulated Tsai on her election earlier in the year.
As criticism bubbled up on news networks and social media, Trump pushed back, defending himself in a tweet: “Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”
He is right. The US continue to do big defense deals with Taiwan despite having no diplomatic relations with it — the Obama administration approved a $1.83 billion defense deal in 2015, despite protests from Beijing.
