Taiwan Relations Act

The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA; ) is an act of the United States Congress. Since the formal recognition of the People's Republic of China, the Act has defined the officially substantial but non-diplomatic relations between the US and Taiwan. Background In 1978, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration of the People's Republic of China claimed to be in a "united front" with the U.S., Japan, and western Europe against the Soviets and thus established diplomatic relations with the United States in 1979. The CCP also supported American Operation Cyclone actions in Communist Afghanistan, and leveled a military expedition against Vietnam, America's main antagonist in Southeast Asia. In exchange for this consideration by the CCP, the Carter administration cancelled the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty (SAMDT) with the Republic of China (ROC). The ROC government mobilized its ethnic lobby in the United States to lobby Congress for the swift passage of an American security guarantee for the island. Taiwan could appeal to members of Congress on many fronts: anti-communist China sentiment, a shared wartime history with the ROC, Beijing's human rights violations and its curtailment of religious freedoms. Senator Barry Goldwater and other members of the United States Congress challenged the right of President Jimmy Carter to unilaterally nullify the SAMDT, which the US had signed with the ROC in December 1954 and was ratified by the U.S. Senate in February 1955. Goldwater and his co-filers of the US Supreme Court case Goldwater v. Carter argued that the President required Senate approval to take such an action of termination, under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution, and that, by not doing so, President Carter had acted beyond the powers of his office. The case ultimately was dismissed as non-justiciable, leaving open the constitutional question regarding a president's authority to dismiss a treaty unilaterally.