If the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office (TECRO) in the US could be renamed to include “Taiwan,” the change would support Lithuania’s difficult decision to host a “Taiwanese Representative Office” and prompt other allies to follow suit.
The Financial Times on Friday reported that US President Joe Biden’s administration is “seriously considering a request from Taiwan” to change TECRO’s name to the “Taiwan Representative Office,” and that US National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell has backed the change.
Renaming TECRO is one objective that Taiwanese diplomats have been striving for over many years, and it has garnered support from US lawmakers.
In December last year, 78 members of the US House of Representatives wrote to then-US secretary of state Mike Pompeo to request that TECRO change its name, new guidelines for governing the interactions of US and Taiwanese officials and a bilateral trade agreement.
The Ensuring American Global Leadership and Engagement Act, passed by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in July, and the Taiwan Diplomatic Review Act, introduced by some US lawmakers in May, also advocated for TECRO’s name change.
The Biden administration in April lifted certain restrictions governing US officials’ interactions with their Taiwanese counterparts, marking a leap in improving bilateral ties. By comparison, renaming TECRO without changing its status would be less troublesome.
Some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members said renaming TECRO would not advance Taiwan-US relations in any concrete way, and warned the Democratic Progressive Party government to brace for any backlash from Beijing if TECRO’s name is changed.
Compared with negotiating a trade agreement, renaming TECRO might be a small, symbolic step, but the change could consolidate Washington’s leadership among democratic allies.
Beijing is applying political and economic tricks to pressure Lithuania into reversing its decision to host a Taiwanese representative office. If such an office is opened in Vilnius, it would be the only representative office in Europe to have “Taiwan” in its name.
There has been speculation as to whether Lithuania might flinch under Beijing’s pressure, as Guyana did in February as it retracted its decision to open a “Taiwan Office,” despite US officials having lauded the deal.
While US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman have supported Lithuania in developing ties with Taiwan, their verbal support would be more powerful if a Taiwanese representative office could sit in Washington.
If Washington worries that renaming TECRO might provoke Beijing with little gain, it could engage other allies to join its effort and make “Taiwan” offices “a new normal” across the world.
The European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs on Sept. 1 approved proposals that urge the EU to bolster political ties with Taiwan and rename its European Economic and Trade Office the “EU Office in Taiwan.”
Likewise, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan, deserves a new name that better reflects its status and importance.
As the Coordination Council for North American Affairs was renamed the Taiwan Council for US Affairs in 2019, it is curious why the council’s parallel, AIT, could not be renamed in a similar way.
At a juncture when many countries are pushing back on China’s “wolf warrior diplomacy” and developing warmer ties with Taiwan, there is no better time — for Taiwan as well as for other countries — to rename the representative offices that embody their foreign policies.
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
After “Operation Absolute Resolve” to capture former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, the US joined Israel on Saturday last week in launching “Operation Epic Fury” to remove Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his theocratic regime leadership team. The two blitzes are widely believed to be a prelude to US President Donald Trump changing the geopolitical landscape in the Indo-Pacific region, targeting China’s rise. In the National Security Strategic report released in December last year, the Trump administration made it clear that the US would focus on “restoring American pre-eminence in the Western hemisphere,” and “competing with China economically and militarily
RSS