TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — An amendment to the annual U.S. State Department spending bill that will prevent the department from spending funds to enforce restrictions on high-level bilateral U.S.-Taiwan communications was passed by voice vote in the House of Representatives on Thursday (June 27).
During his floor speech that day, Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment would prevent the enforcement of “arbitrary, self-imposed” State Department rules that restrict communication between U.S. officials and their Taiwanese counterparts. Tiffany said these guidelines are designed to prevent high-level coordination between the U.S. and Taiwan.
Tiffany argued the restrictions are not only “bad policy,” but they are also "in direct conflict with existing laws that call for expanding bilateral cooperation such as the Taiwan Travel Act.” He said the rules inhibit the ability of high-ranking U.S. defense officials to work with military planners in Taipei and “impose degrading and embarrassing restrictions that serve no reasonable purpose.”
He cited bans on displaying Taiwan's flag and the playing of Taiwan's national anthem at functions held on U.S. government property as examples of unnecessary restrictions. The U.S. State Department "even police(s) language warning American officials not to refer to Taiwan as a ‘country’ or its elected leaders as a ‘government,’" said Tiffany.
“These directives do not help the U.S. and they do not help Taiwan, but they do help the Chinese Communist Party,” Tiffany said. He added that this is why former President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo “got rid of them.”
"Unfortunately, the Biden administration quietly reinstated them in 2021," he said, as he explained why he supported the amendment to the spending bill. Addressing House Speaker Mike Johnson, Tiffany said that “it makes no sense that a State Department memo supercedes the laws we pass.”
"America should not ask China for a permission slip to talk to our friends and allies in Taiwan or anywhere else, or anywhere else,” he said.
Tiffany's office told Taiwan News that the amendment passed on a voice vote and no one demanded a roll call vote. The bill then passed with a final tally of 212-200.
In the closing days of the Trump administration, the U.S. State Department lifted decades-old restrictions on diplomatic exchanges between American and Taiwanese diplomats. Since the U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan under the Carter administration in 1979, the State Department has imposed increasing layers of restrictions on official interactions with Taiwan for fear of agitating China.
In March 2021, reports surfaced that the Biden administration would codify many, but not all, of the steps taken by its predecessor to ease restrictions on diplomatic exchanges between Washington and Taipei. The State Department then announced new guidelines in April that year for government contacts with Taiwan that would enable U.S. officials to meet more freely with their Taiwanese counterparts.
However, according to Tiffany's Deputy Chief of Staff Mac Zimmerman, a State Department memo issued on June 29, 2021 titled “Memorandum for All Department and Agency Executive Secretaries” reinstated many of the restrictions.
