Steve Yates, senior fellow and chair of the America First Policy Institute’s (AFPI) China Policy Initiative, said he supports House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's potential upcoming trip to Taiwan and believes the trip will demonstrate the United States' commitment to maintaining a strong relationship with the island.
The Pentagon has begun planning for McCarthy to travel abroad later this year. An official involved with the planning said the trip would include a visit to Taiwan, Punchbowl reported.
“It is appropriate and important that Speaker McCarthy visits Taiwan early in his tenure. It exemplifies a core principle of our America First policy agenda, that we engage with Taiwan on all issues of priority for the well-being of the American people at whatever level we see fit,” Yates said, according to a statement provided to State Newswire.
“It also demonstrates America’s support for Taiwan freely and securely going through its presidential election, despite Beijing’s ill will and intimidation," he added. ''Taiwan remains a vital partner in our efforts to strategically safe-shore supply chains and counter the malign influences of the Chinese Communist Party.”
When former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022, China responded by executing a series of military drills near Taiwan and criticizing the visit as a violation of Washington's stance towards the island nation, Punchbowl reported. At the time, McCarthy said he supported Pelosi's trip and expressed that he would make a similar trip if he became speaker.
McCarthy will be the third speaker to visit Taiwan since 1997, according to Taiwan News.
The U.S. signaled support for Taiwan, including as much as $10 billion in military aid to the island nation in the annual defense spending bill, according to Defense News. Taiwan will receive $2 billion in loans each year through the fiscal year 2027.
President Biden signed the bill in December and, in response, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry thanked Congress “for showing the great importance it attaches to Taiwan-U.S. relations and strengthening Taiwan’s security,” AP News reported. China’s Foreign Ministry said that the bill “severely affects peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
The Taiwan Relations Act, enacted in 1979, asserts that the U.S. aims to maintain peaceful trade and cultural relations with both Taiwan and China, but specifies that “the United States shall provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character and shall maintain the capacity of the United States to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people of Taiwan,” according to the Congressional Record.
Yates, a China analyst and former White House official, was appointed in February 2022 to serve as chair of AFPI's China Policy Initiative, according to the AFPI website. Yates also previously served as an analyst at the National Security Agency, a senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, president of Radio Free Asia, and chairman of the Idaho Republican Party.
