Heritage Foundation senior fellow Steve Yates discusses how U.S. foreign policy on China and Taiwan might unfold under the new Trump Administration and the key role Secretary of State Marco Rubio will play.
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00:00What does it mean for the U.S. to balance this unofficial relationship with Taiwan and also confront this threat from China without this escalation in the Indo-Pacific region?
00:12Well, first I would say Secretary Rubio knows these issues exceedingly well.
00:17He might be the best prepared Secretary of State we've ever had in this policy area.
00:24He has very clear views that are in alignment with the President's, but also knows leaders in broader Asia and other key regions very, very well.
00:34And so when he's talking about the China challenge, I think most Americans agree that in terms of an external challenge to the United States, it's by far the most significant we've faced in maybe two generations.
00:50So Secretary Rubio has his hands full, but he is extremely knowledgeable on this.
00:56I think he's going to be pushing back by making sure that if the United States and our allies are doing all we can to protect ourselves, to thrive economically among ourselves,
01:10to increase secure supply chains and lessen dependencies on those who seek to do us harm, all of those trends lead us to a more peaceful path with regard to coexisting with the People's Republic of China.
01:25So I think that's his marching orders.
01:28Looking at this giant checkerboard here, what's going to be some of Trump's biggest priorities when looking at the China challenge right here?
01:38Well, really it comes back to energy and raw materials.
01:42They're some of our most sensitive supply chain vulnerabilities.
01:47If you're going to be a high tech manufacturing export economy, you have to have access to rare earth materials.
01:53You have to have access to a lot of different minerals, raw materials.
01:57In recent decade or so, People's Republic of China has monopolized supply chains in some of these areas.
02:04All of the refining of these materials, whether it's petroleum products or just rare earths or other minerals, that even if we extracted them in the United States, the processing of them in many cases is in China.
02:18And so we have to do some things together with our allies to reprocess, store and mine for these things to lessen that dependency.
02:29If we don't do that, then there's leverage that I think is insurmountable where China feels like they have ways that can cripple us in a time of crisis.
02:38And they themselves have insulated themselves against sanctions.
02:41Has there been a shift in President Trump's China policy, whether he's being more lenient or being more tough on him?
02:49Is there any shift because there was this kind of period in between where he wasn't in power?
02:54Well, I've lived in the sort of U.S., China, Taiwan, Asia policy space for 35 years.
03:02And there hasn't been a day when the words of a president haven't been microanalyzed to death.
03:08But living every day on the edge of a potential Taiwan crisis, South Sea crisis, Senkaku Islands crisis, that's not where President Trump wants to be.
03:19And so we'll see whether he's able to reset that sort of chessboard.
03:24But those things are going to be going on.
03:26The first two days, the first hundred days are not going to be sufficient to draw conclusions.
03:31I would just end with Secretary Rubio is, I think, probably the single most reassuring signal anyone could ask for in terms of where the president's priorities are going to go.
03:42And we look to him to be a clear articulator of what matters in this U.S.-Asia relationship going forward.