As the U.S. votes to return Donald Trump to office, TaiwanPlus talks to Wen-Ti Sung, non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, to understand why voters have gone back to the former president and what the next steps are for Taiwan as it faces a potentially more isolationist United States.
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00:00As this evening has unfolded and Donald Trump has now reached the 270 electoral votes to win the next presidential election,
00:08what are some of your key reactions as events unfolded?
00:12What we seem to be seeing is a convincing Trump victory that he has managed to crack through the so-called Rust Belt blue wall up north
00:23in places like Wisconsin, Michigan, and especially Pennsylvania.
00:28And so that seems to suggest that Trump has been making inroads into the blue-collar suburban white voters that Joe Biden managed to steal from Trump four years ago.
00:41Now Trump seems to be winning those very votes back. The votes are essential for breaking through the blue wall up north.
00:48Trump also seems to have made inroads with Latino voters down in the subwestern Sunbelt states like Nevada, Arizona.
00:57So he has managed to secure a very convincing victory in the southeastern Sunbelt states like Georgia and North Carolina.
01:04Why do you think U.S. voters moved in that direction further towards Trump's new platform which we have seen be more isolationist or more protectionist towards the U.S.?
01:18I think economy is one major factor. We know that the U.S. government has been using a massive stimulus package as a way to resuscitate the American economy after COVID.
01:31However, that has generated inflation, which is an issue that's definitely been felt across class lines, racial lines, and gender lines.
01:39That may explain one reason why there seems to be an anti-incumbent sentiment on the part of the voters.
01:46One other issue I think is about ongoing wars in Ukraine and Russia as well as in the Middle East.
01:54Ongoing wars of long duration I think at some point is going to create war wariness on the part of American voters.
02:00And the fact that war in the Middle East has proven to be particularly a contentious issue for the Democratic coalition as well might have contributed to a lower-than-desirable turnout on the Democratic side for Kamala Harris.
02:16Taiwan is very much a factor here, especially as we are looking at a Republican-controlled Congress and a Republican-controlled presidency.
02:26Do you think, though, that a Congress which has traditionally been more friendly towards Taiwan might be able to continue supporting Taiwan despite Donald Trump's more protectionist tendencies?
02:38I think for the congressional front, it's going to be a major theater for Taiwanese diplomacy over the next four years.
02:46We know that no matter the position of the executive of the presidential candidates on either the Republican or Democratic side, on Congress, on Capitol Hill, there's significant bipartisan consensus on supporting Taiwan.
03:02So that's one reason why I think Taiwan will try to regain support in the U.S. political world by starting small district by district, congressman by congressman.
03:12So congressional action, legislative diplomacy, parliamentary diplomacy, these are going to be major fault lines for Taiwanese diplomacy vis-Ã -vis China for the next few years for sure.