Who is going to be the new US secretary of state?

President-elect Donald Trump is meeting with a broadened range of candidates to become America's top diplomat, including John R. Bolton, an ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush; Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor and ambassador to China under President Obama; Rex W. Tillerson, the president and chief executive of Exxon Mobil; and Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia.

After Trump's controversial phone call with the president of Taiwan - a move that irritated China - , Mr. Bolton sounds like a potential candidate. Mr. Bolton advocates closer ties with Taiwan as a means of putting pressure on China, arguing that Beijing’s growing power in the region should be checked, reports the NY Times. 

Furthermore, on the ABC program “This Week,” Vice President-elect Mike Pence mentioned Mr. Bolton as a potential candidate. Despite their differences over the Iraq war, which Mr. Bolton ardently supported, Mr. Trump said during the campaign that he turned to Mr. Bolton for military advice and called him “a tough cookie.”

As reported in The New York Times.