2016-12-06wsj.com

Mr. Trump's call with Ms. Tsai and subsequent tweets accusing China of currency manipulation, over-taxing U.S. imports and building "a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea" have generated a "tremendous amount of uncertainty" in Beijing, said David Dollar, the Treasury Department's economic and financial emissary to China during Mr. Obama's first term.

"Some of the issues with China are best settled quietly and confidentially," Mr. Dollar said. "If the whole policy is diplomacy-by-tweet, it's hard to think that's going to meet U.S. objectives."

...

Stephen Yates, a former national security adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney who worked as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, said that for at least a week Ms. Tsai's name was on Mr. Trump's list of foreign leaders whom he would speak with by phone.

"To my knowledge, Taiwan was on that list early, and it took some time to arrange," said Mr. Yates, who is seen as a candidate for a post on Mr. Trump's national security team. "It was a message in the sense that Donald Trump is not necessarily going to be told what he can or can't do because a foreign leader says so. That's exactly the kind of thing that millions of Americans detest about Washington," said Mr. Yates, who currently is visiting Taiwan for meetings with senior officials.

"If it's going to cause some pain, then so be it," he said.

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Mr. Trump used Twitter on Sunday to complain that China "heavily" taxes U.S. products entering their country, but that the U.S. doesn't tax Chinese imports. China does impose a tariff, a sort of import tax, ranging between 5% and 9.7%, on many products.

The U.S. in many cases charges a tariff on imports from China and many other countries, ranging between 2.5% and 2.9%. Mr. Trump has in the past floated the idea of imposing a tariff against China more than ten times larger.

While Mr. Trump has appeared to soften some of his other campaign stances, on issues such as climate change and torture of terrorism suspects, he has not backed off his calls to more aggressively challenge Beijing.

His approach in recent days "could force the Chinese to feel they have to respond," said Michael Auslin, a resident scholar in Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Auslin said China could decide to take any number of steps, including putting "another 1,000 missiles across the [Taiwan] strait." It also



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