WVU Hospitals labor union threatens strike

Natalie Schreyer

December 22, 2016

Union workers at West Virginia University Hospitals gave notice Thursday of a possible 10-day strike if the union cannot reach an agreement with WVUH.

The existing agreement will expire Dec. 31, and if a tentative pact is not in place by noon on Jan. 1, union members would begin the strike.

The union voted down the most recent contract offer from the agency earlier this week. Chris Cordwell, business manager for Laborers’ Local Union 814, which has approximately 900 members working at WVUH, including clinical associates, materials handlers and workers in housekeeping, transport, sterile processing and other areas, said issues at stake include possible increases in health insurance premiums and deductibles for workers. There also are concerns over wages, he said.

“We’re trying to keep benefits where we can afford ’em,” Cordwell said. “I don’t think the union’s asking for too much.”

The next meeting between the union and the hospital is scheduled for Dec. 26, according to Cordwell.

In a statement, WVUH spokeswoman Amy Johns said the agency is “disappointed that the members of Local 814 did not approve the contract offered.”

“We believe this was a very fair proposal that would continue to place our workers at the highest levels of compensation and benefits compared to other hospitals in the state,” Johns said. “WVUH officials have been negotiating with union representatives in good faith since October. We are hopeful that in the coming days our union employees will approve an agreement. Regardless of this development, WVU Hospitals is prepared to ensure that our patients’ care and safety remain our top priorities.” 

Time to tackle labor union reform

By RICHARD BERMAN 

12/3/16 

Many a message was sent on Election Day. But perhaps the loudest came from blue-collar employees who, in voting for President-elect Trump, turned their backs on union bosses.

The disconnect between union leadership, which overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton, and union membership is telling. In 2016, labor leaders made more than $142 million in campaign contributions, almost 90 percent of it to Democrats. This is nearly double Big Labor's total in 2008.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the National Education Association led the way with roughly $20 million. The AFL-CIO gave roughly $11.5 million, while the Service Employees International Union — the primary backer of the job-killing fight for a $15 hourly minimum wage — pledged $3 million.

Big Labor's liberal politicking transcends direct campaign contributions. Newly released Center for Union Facts research shows that Big Labor sent nearly $530 million to Democrats and closely aligned liberal special interest groups from 2012-15 — 99 percent of their entire advocacy budget.

The Democratic Governors Association received more than $10 million, while Catalist, the Democratic Party's go-to data firm, raked in more than $7 million. Controversial advocacy groups run by Al Sharpton (National Action Network) and Jesse Jackson (Rainbow PUSH Coalition) received hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years.

All this, yet 2016 exit polls show that 43 percent of those in union households voted Republican. In states like Ohio, most union household voters supported the Republican Party while union bosses funneled millions in member dues the other way.

It's no wonder that union members want labor leaders to heed their concerns instead of playing politics as usual. According to a Rasmussen poll conducted before the election, only 20 percent of likely voters believed that union bosses "do a good job representing union members."

Nearly 60 percent of voters claimed that union bosses are "out of touch" with most of their members around the country. Even among current or former union members, only 25 percent have a favorable view of union leadership.

The $530 million in political advocacy spending comes straight from member dues (still mandatory in non-right-to-work states) and is theoretically reserved for collective bargaining purposes. But current labor law enables union bosses to fund implicitly political causes while disguising it as worker advocacy.

It leaves the substantial minority of union members (or, in some states, a majority) who voted for Trump and other Republican candidates paying for advocacy that flies in the face of their beliefs.

For this reason, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., reintroduced the Employee Rights Act, which would substantially update American labor law for the first time since the 1940s.

Now supported by 170 members of Congress, the Employee Rights Act would guarantee secret ballot union elections, which are still not required under current labor law, and periodic recertification elections when a workplace has experienced significant turnover.

Perhaps most importantly, the Employee Rights Act would require union bosses to obtain opt-in permission from their members before spending dues dollars on political activities unrelated to collective bargaining. This prevents Big Labor from hijacking hundreds of millions of dollars in member dues while bankrolling a left-wing agenda.

Union members are already on board. The bill's key provisions, including protection from unapproved political spending, register more than 80 percent approval among those in union households.

Congress should answer their cries for help and pass the Employee Rights Act.

These are 2016’s best and worst NYC subway lines

BY AMY PLITT@CURBEDNY 

DEC 29, 2016

Crosstown trains ruled, the A and 5 trains drooled

Another year has come and gone, and with the end of 2016 comes Straphangers’ State of the Subway report card. (h/t Gothamist) Predictably, there’s a fair bit of bad news in the report, but there’s also some surprisingly good news—namely, that there was a three-way tie for the best subway line of 2016. Yep, you read that right: three subways had good enough service this year to rise to the top of the heap. (Straphangers measures performance along a MetroCard rating system—the top three received a $2.05 rating.)

Those lines were the 7, the 1, and—good news, Williamsburgers!—the L, though as we all know, that’s soon to change. Here’s why each one ranked so highly, per Straphangers:

1. The 1 is less crowded and cleaner than the average subway line

2. The 7 had less frequent subway car breakdowns than the average subway line and the greatest percentage of clean subway car interiors.

3. The L had a nearly perfect score for accurate and understandable subway car announcements.

Not everything about those lines is perfect, of course—the L is more crowded than the average subway line (duh), and breaks down more regularly; in-car announcements on the 1 are not as clear as on other lines—but hey, it’s something.

As for the worst, two lines tied in crappiness: the 5 and the A. Both lines perform poorly when it comes to providing regular service; additionally, the 5 is really crowded, and the A breaks down more frequently than other lines.

Here are some of the report’s other findings:

• System-wide regularity worsened, as did the rate at which subway cars broke down.
• The train that performed the best, in terms of regular service: the G—take that, haters.
• The most crowded line is the 4, as anyone who’s ridden it during the morning rush hour will tell you.
• The 7 is the cleanest line, while the Q is the dirtiest, with about 15 percent of its cars ranked as “moderately” or “heavily” dirty.

So what can we conclude about the state of the subways from this report? Well, for all of the transit system’s faults, it could always be worse. Onward to 2017, then!

SEIU Plans 30 Percent Cut After Trump Victory

Tom O’Connor

12/28/2016

The U.S. second-largest labor union, the Service Employees International Union, revealed it was planning massive cuts in response to the economic policies of President-elect Donald Trump, Bloomberg reported Tuesday. In an internal memo dated Dec. 14 and later revealed by Bloomberg Businessweek, SEIU President Mary Kay Henry told employees to the union would have to “dramatically re-think” after Republicans made electoral gains last month and attained significant political influence in the country.

The union, with an annual budget of $300 million, was reportedly planning for an immediate 10 percent budget cut in the beginning of 2017. "Because the far right will control all three branches of the federal government, we will face serious threats to the ability of working people to join together in unions,” Henry wrote. “These threats require us to make tough decisions that allow us to resist these attacks and to fight forward despite dramatically reduced resources.”

Henry went on to state that the union would "plan for a 30 percent reduction" in budget by 2018, when SEIU would gather support in hopes of influencing more favorable electoral outcomes in the 2018 midterm election and the 2020 presidential election. A spokesperson later said that a Trump victory meant the union would have to defend itself from "forthcoming attacks on working people and our communities under an extremist-run government."

SEIU, which represents about 2 million healthcare, public service and property service employees across the nation is considered one of the most politically influential labor unions in the U.S., however, organized labor has experienced a number of major setbacks in recent years, especially at the hands of Republicans. While the union's "Fight for $15" campaign to raise the minimum wage witnessed success in places such as New York and California, Republicans have also passed "Right to Work" laws that limit the ability of unions to maintain security agreements with employers and gather funds from its members. 

Despite the historical bad blood between Republicans and labor unions, Trump received the highest electoral support from union households since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. About 43 percent of union households chose Trump, trailing his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton by only 8 percent.

The Trump offensive: Cabinet picks signal major employer offensive against Labor

by Dave Schneider 

December 28, 2016

Jacksonville, FL - On Dec. 8, President-elect Donald Trump announced fast food executive Andy Puzder as his pick for Secretary of Labor. Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns Hardee's, Carl’s Jr. and several other national chains.

If confirmed by the Senate, Puzder will head up the Department of Labor, which sets wage and hour standards, controls unemployment insurance and enforces U.S. labor law.

During his presidential campaign, Trump criticized free trade agreements like NAFTA and the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and portrayed himself as an anti-establishment candidate. This populist message resonated with a section of white workers in Midwestern states hit hard by free trade agreements, like Michigan and Ohio.

Far from standing up to big business, however, Trump stands ready to lead an onslaught of attacks on the working class on behalf of corporate America. During the interim period before his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017, Trump has made peace with the same banks and monopoly capitalists he sometimes criticized during the campaign. The cabinet assembled by Trump includes more billionaires than any previous administration. Instead of ruling through loyal politicians and bureaucratic puppets, the 1% directly holds power in Trump's administration, with certain corporations and banks (Exxon Mobil, Goldman Sachs) explicitly getting seats at the table.

Trump's cabinet picks signal the beginning of a massive government-led employer offensive against labor unions, collective bargaining and workers' rights. With labor at its weakest point in decades, employers hope to deal a mortal blow to the remaining unions and roll back the protections and gains made by working people. The next four years promise an open class war between employers and workers - a war that today's unions are incredibly ill-equipped to fight. To defeat the Trump offensive, labor must embrace the weapons they fought and won with in the past - and do so quickly.

Opening shots: The Carrier scam and trade policy

Trump announced Puzder as his pick for Labor Secretary just days after posting a string of nasty anti-union attacks on Twitter. Leaders of United Steelworkers (USW) 1999, which represents Carrier manufacturing workers in Indiana, came under fire from Trump after a heavily publicized deal struck between the president-elect and Carrier management earlier in the month.

Trump met with Carrier over plans to outsource its profitable Indiana manufacturing operations to Mexico, seeking lower labor costs and higher profit. In exchange for a series of corporate tax cuts totaling at least $6 million, Carrier supposedly agreed to keep some of their plants in the U.S. According to Trump, the deal saved 1100 U.S. jobs slated for relocation.

Details later emerged revealing that Trump's deal only keeps about 800 jobs in the U.S., leaving 600 Carrier workers unemployed. Chuck Jones, president of USW 1999, slammed Trump for leaving the union out of negotiations and exaggerating the number of jobs saved by the deal.

Trump responded on Twitter with a whiny anti-union rant directed at both Jones and USW 1999. Blaming the union for outsourcing, the president-elect wrote, "If United Steelworkers 1999 was any good, they [Carrier] would have kept those jobs in Indiana." Trump singled out Jones, who he claimed had "done a terrible job representing workers."

By themselves, these tweets seem petty and childish. In actuality, they mark a dramatic shift in the president-elect's public approach towards organized labor. Trump criticized union leaders for backing his opponent, Hillary Clinton, on the campaign trail, but he stayed away from the outright anti-union rhetoric used by other Republican candidates, like Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. His goal was obvious: break off a large percentage of union voters from Clinton. With the election over, Trump dropped all pretenses. He attacked USW 1999 by name and blamed the union for the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs.

Trump campaigned heavily against corporate outsourcing and he repeatedly vowed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. But cabinet picks like billionaire and free trade advocate Wilbur Ross for Commerce Secretary suggest Trump has no intention of "ripping up" trade agreements like NAFTA. It seems more likely that Trump will scapegoat unions, higher wages, and work rules for supposedly making domestic manufacturing too expensive for corporations.

Weaponizing the Department of Labor

Thus far, Trump's proposed cabinet secretaries hold views sharply at odds with the stated purpose of their departments and agencies. Texas Governor Rick Perry, an oil industry puppet and Trump's pick for Energy Secretary, called for abolishing the Department of Energy in 2012. Similarly, climate-change denier Scott Pruitt received Trump's nomination to head up the Environmental Protection Agency. For the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Trump tapped Ben Carson, an outspoken opponent of public housing for poor and working people and a person with zero government experience.

Trump's pick for Secretary of Labor follows this trend. As the top executive of a major fast food corporation and an outspoken opponent of unions, Puzder has frequently come into conflict with the Department of Labor he now seeks to run.

Workplace safety ranked low on Puzder's list of priorities as CEO of CKE Restaurants. During Puzder's tenure, the Department of Labor issued 98 OSHA safety violations, including 36 that posed fatal or serious bodily harm to workers, to CKE Restaurants and its subsidiaries. Employers have long sought to roll back OSHA, which allows workers to anonymously report hazards to the Department of Labor and carries steep fines for violations. With Puzder able to control OSHA investigations and enforcement, companies stand to make larger profits at the expense of the health and safety of workers.

Wage theft runs rampant throughout the fast food industry, and CKE Restaurants under Puzder was no exception. The Labor Department conducted numerous investigations into wage theft complaints by workers at CKE Restaurants, most of which resulted in fines, settlements and damages awarded to workers. A particularly disturbing 2007 investigation found that Hardee's Food Systems Inc., a part of CKE Restaurants, had illegally withheld overtime from over 450 workers and was forced to pay $58,000.

Employers will face no such consequences from Trump's Secretary of Labor. Wage theft investigations will become few and far between as Puzder scales down the size of the Labor Department, which already suffers from a shortage of staff. Puzder also pledged to repeal overtime protections for workers, which were expanded under President Obama, paving the way for greater exploitation and higher profits.

Trump declares war on the Fight for $15

In the last four years, fast food workers, like those employed by CKE Restaurants, have waged a countrywide struggle for a $15 per hour minimum wage and union representation. Using a combination of protests and one-day strikes, the Fight for $15 campaign has won victories in cities like Seattle, Los Angeles and New York City, where local governments have agreed to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour for some workers. Their efforts, supported heavily by SEIU, have mainly targeted the fast food industry, where corporations like CKE Restaurants rake in obscene profits by exploiting a non-union, low-wage workforce.

By picking a fast food CEO to head the Department of Labor, Trump has declared war on the Fight for $15 movement. Puzder vocally opposes raising the federal minimum wage, currently at $7.25 per hour, which puts him in line with Trump's own position that "wages are too high" for workers in the U.S.

National right-to-work: Trump's anti-union kill shot

National right-to-work legislation sits at the core of this new employer offensive against unions. Right-to-work laws force unions to represent workers who refuse to join and pay dues. This gives workers a disincentive to join, since they receive all the benefits of union membership whether they pay dues or not. The effect is a net drain on union resources, which go towards representing non-members, and a weakened position at the bargaining table with employers.

Right-to-work laws came about in 1948, when an anti-labor coalition of Democrats and Republicans passed the Taft-Hartley Act on behalf of employers. This devastating piece of legislation outlawed solidarity strikes, restricted union activity and allowed states to pass so-called 'right to work' laws. Since that time, 26 states have enacted right-to-work legislation. The Bureau of Labor statistics estimates that workers in these states make about $6000 per year less than workers in states where all workers in union workplaces pay dues.

After the 2010 election brought a wave of Tea Party governors to power, employers successfully passed right-to-work laws in union strongholds like Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin. Since then, however, unions defeated similar efforts in Missouri, West Virginia and most recently Virginia. Attempts to push right-to-work in the three strongest union states - California, New York and Illinois - have go nowhere.

With union density at its lowest point since the Great Depression, employers hope to break organized labor with national right-to-work legislation. Republican Congressman Steve King of Iowa and Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky introduced the National Right to Work Act to both houses of Congress in 2015, but it stalled in the face of a guaranteed veto by President Obama. Trump, an outspoken supporter of right-to-work, along with a Republican-controlled Congress, gives employers an opportunity to turn their twisted dream into reality.

Support for national right-to-work legislation - along with other anti-union laws, like the Employee Reform Act - in Trump's proposed cabinet goes beyond Puzder. Billionaire Betsy DeVos, tapped by Trump for Secretary of Education, was the main financial backer of Michigan's 2012 right-to-work law. DeVos is the daughter-in-law of Richard DeVos, the founder of Amway, who made his fortune by ripping off poor and working people with ‘multi-level marketing’ pyramid schemes.

DeVos pushed right-to-work in Michigan under the Trojan horse of ‘education reform,’ aimed at weakening teachers’ unions and converting public schools into private charter schools. As Education Secretary, DeVos can leverage national education policy against both the teachers’ unions and organized labor as a whole.

Labor must fight back

The danger posed by Trump brings to mind another U.S. president who presided over a massive employer offensive against Labor: Ronald Reagan. Reagan came to power in 1980 with the full backing of banks, billionaires and corporations. After the economic crisis and stagnation of the 1970s, employers desperately wanted to boost profits, and they saw organized labor as their main obstacle. Reagan set to work immediately by breaking the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike. In doing so, he signaled to employers that the federal government would support their campaign to roll back wages and benefits.

Unfortunately, labor finds itself in an even weaker position today than it did under Reagan. In 2015, union membership reached its lowest point since World War II, sitting at 11.1% (14.7 million). The private sector experienced an even worse drop in union membership, going from 16.5% in 1983 to 6.7% in 2015.

But the crisis facing labor goes beyond membership numbers. Most of today's union leaders have abandoned the strike weapon as a tactic for struggle. Only 12 work stoppages involving a total of 47,000 workers took place in 2015 in the U.S. Even in 1981, the same year Reagan busted the PATCO strike, 145 work stoppages involving 729,000 workers took place around the country.

Instead of struggling against employers and contending for working class power on the shop floor, union leaders have favored an approach of collaboration with management. Since this strategy seldom produces better contracts, these same leaders put the union's money, time, resources, energy and reputation into electing politicians, mostly from the Democratic Party, in hopes of passing pro-worker legislation. Put simply, this strategy came crashing down in 2016.

The Trump offensive has the potential to devastate unions and the entire working class if the labor movement continues down the same failed path. Employers hope to break organized labor once and for all under a Trump presidency, and this radical anti-union cabinet of one-percenters intends to lead this effort. It's well-past time for the U.S. labor movement to reclaim its historical legacy of militant, production-halting strikes and resistance.

America's flawed democracy

By C J Polychroniou

12/26/2016

There is nothing in the constitution that grants American voters the right to choose their president.

One of the basic principles of democracy is "one person, one vote". Other criteria for an efficient and robust model of democracy include an informed and critically inclined citizenry and the presence of a political culture catering to the "common good" instead of the self-centered whims and boundless greed of the rich and powerful.

Unfortunately, none of the above are representative features of American democracy: American politics is increasingly ruled by a moneyed oligarchy that calls the shots, while the country has shifted from a society of citizens to a society of consumers.

The highly flawed nature of American democracy has become more striking in recent years as the absence of political ethos works in tandem with massive economic inequality, job insecurity, and a declining standard of living to produce conditions ripe for corruption, manipulation of public opinion, and authoritarianism.

Indeed, the presidential election of 2016 speaks volumes of the crisis facing American democracy, making the world's richest and most powerful nation resemble a "banana republic".

Electing the electors

For starters, the contest for the White House was between a megalomaniac billionaire with no experience whatsoever in the "art of the possible" (but competent with entanglements with foreign governments and leaders, and an uncanny ability in twisting the tax law to his advantage) and a lifelong politician, widely regarded as a darling of Wall Street as well as a warmonger.

If this is not a sign of a moribund political system, the candidate elected to become the 45th president of the United States lost the popular vote by a bigger margin than of any other US President. Donald Trump was elected president by trailing Hillary Clinton by nearly three million votes.

This "democratic" anomaly is owing to the fact that US presidents are chosen by electors, not by popular vote.

To be sure, there is nothing in the constitution that grants American voters the right to choose their president. When American voters go to the polls to vote for a presidential candidate, what they are essentially doing is casting a vote for their preferred party's nominated slate of electors.

The manufacturing of an individualistic, consumer-driven culture is intended to promote conformism, ignorance and apathy about public affairs, but also a perverted sense of patriotism which targets critically oriented voices as being 'anti-American', thereby opening up a political space for the rise of the likes of Trump, Bush, and Reagan.

The electoral college system is democracy's ugliest anachronism. Because of the design of the electoral college, intended by the founding fathers to prevent the masses from choosing directly who will run the country, a candidate can win the nationwide popular vote and still lose the presidency.

This is what happened in 2000, when Al Gore won nearly half a million more votes than George W Bush, but it was Bush who won the presidency by being declared winner in the state of Florida by less than 540 votes. And, of course, history repeated itself in the 2016 election.

Takeover of 'friendly fascism'

But this is not all. Voter turnout for the presidential elections in the world's outdated democratic model is consistently disturbingly low, an indication that many Americans may feel they their vote doesn't count.

Indeed, voter turnout in the US is incredibly low compared with other advanced democratic nations around the world, ranking 31 out of 35 developed countries.

Some of the reasons for the low voter turnout in the US are attributed to the existence of the electoral college system itself, the two-party system, and even to the fact that elections are being held on a day when most people work.

More than 90 million eligible voters did not vote in the 2016 US presidential election - even though this was deemed to have been one of the most critical elections in recent memory owing to the highly inflammatory statements made by Trump about Mexicans, women, Muslims, and gays.

The reason why so many Americans are abstaining from voting, a cornerstone of democracy, is intrinsically related to the long-stemming pathologies of the American political culture, namely an individualistic and consumer-driven society where the great majority of people cannot name a single Supreme Court justice but trust the military to act in the public interest and act as a cheerleader for the US' militaristic adventures and wars, and a political system increasingly controlled by the wealthy and business.

The manufacturing of an individualistic, consumer-driven culture is intended to promote conformism, ignorance and apathy about public affairs, but also a perverted sense of patriotism which targets critically oriented voices as being "anti-American", thereby opening up a political space for the rise of the likes of Trump, Bush, and Ronald Reagan. That is to say, authoritarian, anti-labour, neoliberal, and jingoist politicians who wish to roll back whatever economic and social progress average Americans have made since the 1960s and maintain the empire.

Undoubtedly, ever since the 1980s, the US has been moving closer and closer to a social order that Bertram Gross identified some 35 years ago as "friendly fascism", an ever closer symbiosis between big business and big government, while citizens are relegated to the sphere of the purely "private", enjoying material goods in exchange for social and political rights.

Indeed, looked at from various perspectives, it would seem that the 2016 US presidential election has brought to the surface all of the ills of America's flawed democracy.

What happens next is hard to predict, but it is likely that very interesting times lie ahead both for "the land of the free and the home of the brave" as well as for the rest of the world.

Trump era heightens Asia-Pacific's tripwires

By J Berkshire Miller

12/27/2016

Trump's victory magnifies geopolitical uncertainty in the Asia-Pacific region.

The Asia-Pacific region is in for another challenging year, with a number of long-standing tripwires ripening during a period of great geopolitical uncertainty.

The stunning victory of United States president-elect Donald Trump earlier this fall only magnifies a number of these areas of concern, ranging from China's destabilizing activities in the maritime domain to North Korea's relentless march towards a more potent nuclear weapons capability.

But, in addition to uncertainty about the incoming Trump administration, there are a host of other wild cards in the region.

Turmoil in the region 

In South Korea, scandal has led to the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and clouded the country's political future. Meanwhile, the regime of Kim Jong-un in North Korea has been quickly moving ahead with the development of its nuclear and missile programs and soon may provide a credible threat to the US continent.

While Trump may see China - as Pyongyang's only significant backer - as both the problem and potential solution, he would be naive to think he can force Beijing's hand on North Korea. It is a challenge that vexed all of his predecessors.

In addition to problems on the Korean peninsula, Russia continues to push for a more active role in the region and also develop its strategic relationship with China.

Meanwhile, in the Philippines. strongman leader Rodrigo Duterte has charted a drastically different course than his predecessors and has broken the recent warming of ties with its ally in Washington.

This has led to a volatile scenario where crumbling US credibility is combined with corresponding weakness among some of the US's most critical relationships in the region.

Will Trump trump East Asia?

Trump's rhetoric thus far on East Asia has largely been erratic and contradictory. On one hand, he has levied threats against China and its unfair economic practices.

And this month, Trump announced the appointment of Peter Navarro, well-known for a hardline approach towards Beijing, as his choice to lead the newly created White House National Trade Council.

Trump has similarly - but reactively - railed against Beijing's security posture in the region, especially in the South China Sea, where he accused Beijing of building a "massive military complex".

The president-elect subsequently called out China, via Twitter, for its seizure of a US navy unmanned underwater vehicle earlier this month, operating off the coast of the Philippines.

It is highly unlikely that Trump will do away with US alliances in the region - which have and continue to serve US commercial and security interests.

Finally, Trump has stirred concern in Beijing with his direct diplomacy with Taiwan and his suggestion that the long-standing "one-China" policy should not be considered as a given.

But prognostics of a looming US-China showdown under Trump may not be entirely accurate.

Trump will surely press hard on China economically and on trade - a bread and butter issue for him.

But, on the trade front, China will also look to take advantage of failed US leadership on delivering the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact and press forward on agreements that are either led or inclusive of Beijing – such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and the China-Japan-Korea trilateral free trade agreement.

It is less clear that Trump will stand stout against China's growing assertiveness in the region, marked by efforts to forcibly change the status quo in the East and South China Seas.

Despite barbs on the South China Sea and promises to rebuild the US navy, most of Trump's known doctrine promotes a myopic "America First" worldview that likely will complicate Washington's established relationships with allies in the region.

Indeed, during his campaign, Trump accused allies, such as Japan and South Korea, of free riding on US military support and promised a tougher approach to alliance burden sharing.

In reality, it is highly unlikely that Trump will do away with US alliances in the region, which have and continue to serve US commercial and security interests.

But, while Trump may not abandon allies, he will definitely take out the crude scalpel and look for trade-offs. This approach has already led to weakening faith among Washington's allies in the US deterrence commitments in the region, and that trend will only continue if Trump proceeds to treat alliance relationships in Asia in a transactional manner.

China's side of the game

China will push ahead accordingly and look to expose areas of vulnerability. In the coming year, there will be a number of areas that Beijing can retaliate to Trump's plans to turn the economic screws.

First, China could continue to up the stakes in the East and South China Seas and might look to be more overt and bold in its militarization of reclaimed reefs in the latter.

Beijing may also look to use its newly placed military assets in the region to announce an Air Defense Identification Zone over the controversial "nine-dash line" in the South China Sea.

Similarly, in the East China Sea, Beijing may look to increase the presence of its maritime militia in the waters surrounding the Senkaku islands and further push into "grey-zone" situations - sensing Washington's lack of appetite to jump to Japan's defense.

China will also be keeping a shrewd eye on US policies regarding Taiwan and, depending on the direction that Trump goes, may look to press harder on Taipei through tightening the vice on trade and tourism flows and being more overt with its poaching of Taipei's diplomatic allies.

A more gloomy and dangerous scenario might see China ramp up military threats to Taiwan through missile tests and naval exercises in the Cross-Straits region.

It is time to buckle up for a bumpy road in Asia over the coming months.