Tag: Donald Trump

You can read the whole article at the link, but I would speculate that China has been playing the “North Korea card” for years considering they have done little to nothing to stop North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs:

– China could exercise a veto against any new U.N. sanctions on North Korea, ignore existing sanctions and even accept the communist neighbor as a nuclear state if the incoming administration of Donald Trump plays the “Taiwan card,” a U.S. expert said.

Trump sparked China’s anger by accepting a call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen earlier this month in breach of the decades-long diplomatic tradition that the U.S. has kept under its “One China” policy since severing ties with Taiwan and normalizing relations with Beijing.

China considers Taiwan a renegade province that must be unified with the mainland and rails against any support for Taiwan’s independence or the notion that the island is not part of the country. Despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, the U.S. has maintained friendly relations with Taiwan.

On Sunday, Trump went a step further, saying he doesn’t understand “why we have to be bound by a One China policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.” The remark suggests Trump could use the Taiwan card in dealings with Beijing.  [Yonhap]

You can read the rest at the link.

It looks like the North Koreans are willing to give some time to the incoming Trump administration:

A top North Korean diplomat is reported to have told her American counterparts at a meeting in Switzerland that the North will refrain from provocations until the Donald J. Trump administration’s North Korea policy is further developed.

According to Radio Free Asia on Wednesday, Choe Son-hui, director general of the U.S. Affairs Department of the North’s Foreign Ministry and a top envoy to the six-party talks, said at a meeting with her American counterparts in Geneva last month that the North “would not take action that might close the door before seeing what emerges.”

Choe reportedly told the U.S. delegation that she hopes the Trump administration will review its policy toward the North while keeping her statement in mind.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

However, she caveated her statement by saying this:

Yet, according to meeting records obtained by RFA, Choe reportedly said that should the South and the United States conduct a joint military drill, the North’s response will have to be “very tough.”

Seoul and Washington are scheduled to hold their annual Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises in February.

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the Trump phone call with the President of Taiwan that the media was initially trying to frame as him bungling US foreign policy:

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s phone call with Taiwan’s president shows the incoming administration believes China should work hard on North Korea as much as it cares about the cross-strait issue, a transition team official was quoted as saying Tuesday.

The official made the remark during a meeting with a group of South Korean lawmakers, pointing out that China has been unwilling to use its influence over Pyongyang even though Beijing provides most of the North’s energy and food supplies, according to the participating lawmakers.

They declined to identify the official.

On Friday, Trump spoke by phone with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, breaking the decadeslong diplomatic tradition that the U.S. has kept under its “One China” policy since severing ties with Taiwan and normalizing relations with Beijing.

China considers Taiwan a renegade province that must be unified with the mainland and rails against any support for Taiwan’s independence or the notion that the island is not part of the country. Despite the absence of formal diplomatic ties, the U.S. has maintained friendly relations with Taiwan.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Trump's call with Taiwan's president broke decades of diplomatic protocol. Why isn't Beijing more angry? https://t.co/Kc68V19EVP

— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) December 3, 2016

Some readers may remember that General James Mattis was the person that an anonymous collective of conservatives were supposedly trying to recruit for a third party run for President.  Instead he is now going to be the next Secretary of Defense for the soon to be President Trump:

“We are going to appoint ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis as our secretary of defense. But we’re not announcing it until Monday, so don’t tell anybody,” Trump told his supporters in Cincinnati, Ohio. “Keep it inside the room,” he added jokingly.

Mattis, who served in the Marines from 1969 until his retirement in 2013, represents a big change from the current secretary of defense, the bookish Ashton Carter, a former Harvard professor who was trained as a physicist.  [Yahoo News]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like more people are beginning to realize that the North Korean problem is really a Chinese problem.  Here is what journalist Gordon Chang thinks should be done by the incoming Trump administration to address the Chinese backing of North Korea:

North Korea looks impossible to solve, and it is if we see China as on our side. It is not.  But if we treat China as part of the problem, which it most certainly is, then we can begin to craft solutions, like secondary sanctions. Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, will stop supporting North Korea only when the costs of doing so are too high. So far, his country has suffered almost no penalty.

To impose costs, Trump’s administration could, among other things, cut offending Chinese banks off from the global financial system, sanction every Chinese proliferator, and impose his threatened 45% across-the-board tariff on China’s goods. He could end negotiations on the Bilateral Investment Treaty and treat Chinese businesses like Beijing treats American ones.

And Mr. Trump, starting January 20, will have the tools to raise the costs on Beijing. The Chinese will surely retaliate, but they have few effective options for a long-term struggle. After all, last year they ran a $334.1 billion trade surplus in goods and services against the United States. Trade-surplus countries are vulnerable in trade wars, and that is especially true of a China with an already fragile economy that is dependent on the American market.  [Forbes]

You can read the rest at the link.

I did not realize that the only Asian who spoke at the Republican National Convention was a Korean-American that was part of Donald Trump’s National Diversity Coalition.  She recently gave an interview to the Joong Ang Ilbo about the election of Donald Trump:

Among the speakers for the 2016 Republican National Convention in July was Lisa Shin, a Korean-American ophthalmologist. She was the only Asian-American who spoke at the event. Dr. Shin has served as one of the 60 advisers to the National Diversity Coalition for Trump, the U.S. President-elect Donald J. Trump’s campaign organization established with the stated aim of reflecting the will of ethnic minorities in America.“I think for Hillary, she had a lot of paid people,” said Dr. Shin during a phone interview with the JoongAng Ilbo. “But I didn’t hear a lot about grass-roots activists like I did with Trump. I believe that there was so much momentum, energy and enthusiasm with Trump. Hillary was disconnected from the people. She was what we call elite. She thought she was privileged.”

Dr. Shin is expected to play an advisry role representing Korean-Americans in the Trump administration, although she has not received any formal requests from the transition team yet. The following is an excerpt from the interview.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest of the interview at the link.  It will be interesting to see if she receives an appointment somewhere within the Trump administration.

U.S. North Korea policy under Trump could have latitude https://t.co/SDBwQIKwxP via @upi

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) November 21, 2016

Considering Rhee’s very controversial background running the Washington, DC school system that included allegations of a widespread cheating scandal, she seems an odd choice to run the Department of Education:

President-elect Donald Trump will meet Saturday with Michelle Rhee, a Democrat and former District of Columbia public schools leader who is considered in the running for secretary of education.

Rhee will meet with Trump, a Republican, at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., where he is also meeting with former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, purportedly being considered for secretary of state.

Jason Miller, Trump communications director, confirmed the Rhee meeting Saturday morning with FoxNews.com.

Like Trump, Rhee has been a supporter of school choice, backing some public money for charter schools while the D.C. schools chancellor from 2007 to 2010.

Trump’s School Choice Policy released in September calls for his incoming administration to “immediately” redirect $20 billion in federal funds to school choice — in the form of block grants for an estimate 11 million school-age children living in poverty.  [Fox News]

You can read more at the link.

I don’t see how South Korea can be considered a low cost manufacturing country especially considering the KORUS FTA has made it cheaper for them to manufacture in the US compared to South Korea:

Trump hasn’t spelled out how he wants to rearrange NAFTA, but the basic idea is to encourage or compel more production in the United States, which would mean less production in places like Mexico. But that would be highly disruptive and would penalize American automakers more than their foreign rivals. Trump could probably rewrite the rules in a way that limits Mexican imports to the United States, for instance. But that doesn’t mean automakers would simply move Mexican factories north of the border. They might look for other low-cost countries instead, such as South Korea, India or China. The Trump administration could pursue trade restrictions on those countries as well, but that becomes a game of free-trade whack-a-mole in which the government is trying to tell multinational companies where to invest their money—hardly the lightly regulated pro-growth environment Trump says he wants to create.

If Trump tries to stop US automakers from producing in Mexico, that doesn’t mean he can stop foreign automakers from operating there. So the government would essentially be raising costs for American firms by forcing them out of Mexico, but not for their global competitors.  [Yahoo Finance]

You can read more at the link.