Letters: Trump needs to upend China policy

Doomsayers are aghast over President-elect Donald Trump’s audacious acceptance of a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-Wen, ignoring the 1992 “one China policy” protocol. The U.S. government has recognized this “policy” while it sold $1.3 trillion of debt to China to feed Washington’s insatiable spending addiction.

China’s foreign ministry warned that the call “could greatly damage China-U.S. relations.” Is that a threat? What relations? Our $300 billion trade deficit with China in 2016 or our $26 billion-a-year debt interest payments? Perhaps China’s tariff-free goods entering this country while it imposes 30 percent or more on ours and manipulates its currency to raise prices on American goods. Or maybe China’s tireless efforts to replace the dollar with the yuan as the official global reserve currency.

Yes, if I were China, I wouldn’t want anything to jeopardize this ludicrous sweetheart deal either. Of course, it’s not China’s doing. If America wants to self-destruct, why should China get in the way?

We should expect President Trump to make significant adjustments to our “relations.”

This story was originally published January 12, 2017 at 5:33 PM with the headline "Letters: Trump needs to upend China policy."