This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The political fallout from Donald Trump’s phone call with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen continued on Saturday, as critics said the president-elect could be paving the way to an alteration of decades of US foreign policy.

Gaffe or provocation, Donald Trump's Taiwan phone call affects global stability Read more

“This may make for great reality TV,” one Democratic member of the Senate foreign relations committee said, “but it doesn’t make for great leadership in a divided world.”

The senator, Chris Coons of Delaware, said it was “concerning” that Trump’s way of governing might mirror the “shoot-from-the-hip style” in which he campaigned for the White House.

Trump, Coons said, had to decide whether he would continue to “[get] into Twitter fights or take unscheduled calls from foreign leaders in ways that break with decades of precedent”.

The alternative, he said, was for the president-elect to rely “on the advice of career professionals and the state department and make moves in a calculated and thoughtful way”.

Hours after Trump’s call became public knowledge on Friday, the Chinese government issued a complaint.

“We have noticed relevant reports and lodged solemn representation with the relevant side in the United States,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said in a statement.

“I must point out that there is only one China in the world and Taiwan is an inseparable part of the Chinese territory ... The ‘one China’ principle is the political foundation of China-US relations.”

A spokesman for the Obama administration declined to comment on the complaint.

Trump’s call with Tsai was the first publicly reported between a US president or president-elect and a leader of Taiwan since Washington established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1979.

The US subsequently severed ties with the island, which is viewed by Beijing as a breakaway province.

Trump sought to stem the backlash resulting from the call by noting on Twitter it was the Taiwanese president who had called him. But he was rebuked for the call by foreign policy experts, who raised concerns about his propensity to behave unpredictably.

Christopher Hill, former assistant secretary of state for east Asia and Pacific affairs under George W Bush, said Trump had broken a 40-year tradition in one clear policy related to China.

“Obviously, it was an example of what is all too often happening now with this incoming administration, this tendency to wing it,” Hill told CNN on Friday evening.

He added his concern that Trump’s team would double down on the decision, as opposed to acknowledging the misstep.

“That’s a huge mistake,” Hill said. “And this is not going to be the last of these kind of things. So, things need to get … cleaned up in a hurry in Washington.”

The Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, another Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, criticized Trump in a series of tweets late on Friday.

“Foreign policy consistency is a means, not an end. It’s not sacred. Thus, it’s Trump’s right to shift policy, alliances, strategy,” Murphy wrote.

America’s allies, Murphy said, would “have no clue” what the country stood for if the conversation did not represent a genuine change in foreign policy but simply a temporary deviation at Trump’s behest. The senator further underscored the need for Trump to nominate a secretary of state, “preferably [with] experience”.

In his defense, Trump tweeted: “Interesting how the US sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.”

His transition team described the conversation in a statement as a discussion “of the close economic, political and security ties that exist between Taiwan and the United States”, in which the president-elect also congratulated Tsai on her election earlier this year.

China lodges complaint with US over Trump's Taiwan phone call Read more

The Taiwanese president characterized the phone call as an “intimate and relaxed conversation” that lasted 10 minutes.

A translation of a statement posted on an official Taiwanese government website said Trump and Tsai broached topics including the domestic economy and national defense, and “allowing the people better lives and a guarantee of security”.

“The two briefly exchanged opinions on the situation in the Asia region,” the statement read.

Kellyanne Conway, a senior Trump aide, pushed back on the notion that Trump did not grasp the implications of taking the phone call.

“He either will disclose or not disclose the full contents of that conversation but he’s well aware of what US policy has been,” she told CNN.