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Trump picks longtime friend of Beijing as U.S. ambassador to China

08 December 2016 02:10 (UTC +04:00)

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate Iowa Governor Terry Branstad as the next U.S. ambassador to China, choosing a longstanding friend of Beijing after rattling the world's second largest economy with tough talk on trade and a telephone call with the leader of Taiwan, APA reports quoting Reuters.

The appointment may help to ease trade tensions between the two countries, the world's two biggest agricultural producers, diplomats and trade experts said. It also suggests that Trump may be ready to take a less combative stance towards China than many expected, they said.

Branstad has accepted Trump's offer, Trump spokesman Jason Miller said on Wednesday. The nomination, which will be formally made once the Republican president-elect is sworn in on Jan. 20, was well received, even among some Democrats.

"He's tenacious, and trust me, with the Chinese, you need to be tenacious," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, said of Branstad.

Trump, who defeated Hillary Clinton in last month's election, has said that when he takes office he intends to declare China a currency manipulator, meaning it keeps the yuan artificially low to make its exports cheap, and has threatened to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese goods coming into the United States.

Added to that, his unusual decision to accept a call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen last week prompted a diplomatic protest on Saturday from Beijing, which considers Taiwan a renegade province. Trump's transition team played down the exchange as a courtesy call, but the White House had to reassure China that its decades-old "one China" policy was intact.

Branstad's established personal connection with China could help smooth a relationship defined largely by international security matters and by bilateral trade, where the massive U.S. trade deficit with the country is a source of friction.

"It means that the Trump team understands that it is important to have an ambassador who has access to Xi Jinping,” Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said of the pick.

Branstad called Chinese President Xi Jinping a "longtime friend" when Xi visited Iowa in February 2012, only nine months before he became the Chinese leader.

Before his nomination was announced, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang called Branstad an "old friend" of China when asked in Beijing about a Bloomberg report on the appointment, although he said China would work with any U.S. ambassador.

"We welcome him to play a greater role in advancing the development of China-U.S. relations," he told a daily news briefing.