Taiwan’s Trump Conundrum

If Donald Trump returns to the White House in January, U.S. allies and partners around the world will have to reckon with a president who views foreign policy in transactional terms, questions the value of U.S. alliances, and professes admiration for America’s adversaries. This dilemma will be keenly felt in Taiwan, which relies on the United States for its security and cannot turn to any other country or deter China alone. 

When Trump exited office in 2021, he was broadly popular in Taiwan and credited with bringing the United States and Taiwan closer than they had been since 1979, when the United States established diplomatic ties with the People’s Republic of China and severed its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar visited Taiwan, becoming the most senior U.S. official to visit the island in decades. He was followed by Under Secretary of State Keith Krach, who became the highest-level official from the State Department to visit in decades. Arms sales to Taiwan increased, as did security cooperation. In one survey of eight places in the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan was the only one that expressed a preference for Trump over Biden in the 2020 election. 

After a series of comments from Trump, however, it is unclear whether Taiwan can assume continued support during a second Trump term. Last summer, in an interview on Fox News, Trump stated, “Taiwan did take all of our chip business…we should have stopped them. We should have taxed them. We should have tariffed them.” In an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek published this week, Trump repeated the claim that Taiwan took the United States’ semiconductor manufacturing industry and called for it to “pay us for defense,” likening the United States to an insurance company. While President Joe Biden has stated on four occasions that he would come to Taiwan’s defense in the face of Chinese aggression, both Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance have declined to commit to do so. 

Taiwan has sought to downplay the significance of these comments, noting that for decades it has enjoyed strong support in the United States and that several senior officials who served under Trump have emphasized Taiwan’s importance. To be sure, there is broad bipartisan support for providing security assistance to Taiwan and pursuing closer economic and cultural ties. At the same time, the president enjoys wide latitude in conducting foreign policy and the belief that Congress can tie Trump’s hands on this issue is misplaced. 

Just as important, Trump’s comments on Taiwan are fully consistent with his worldview and therefore his view is unlikely to change. For Trump, bilateral economic ties tend to drive relationships, with geopolitical issues taking a backseat. In the case of Taiwan, his belief that it has taken advantage of the United States economically will likely color how he views every other aspect of the relationship. 

Those who believe the United States should do more to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan and come to Taiwan’s defense if deterrence fails point to Taiwan’s strategic location, its economic importance, its status as one of the region’s strongest democracies, and the ramifications that a failure to defend it would have for international order and relations with U.S. allies. Trump, however, is unlikely to find such arguments persuasive. 

Trump is skeptical of the value of U.S. alliances, convinced instead that U.S. allies are free riders that benefit more from the alliance than Washington. If the United States chooses not to defend Taiwan and this prompts allies to take their security into their own hands, he could view such a development as a net positive, as they would be asking less of the United States. 

While defending Taiwan would also be important to uphold the norm that states cannot change borders by force, if Trump could not be persuaded to support arming Ukraine to defend this principle, it is unlikely that he would assist Taiwan to do so. Furthermore, in the same Bloomberg Businessweek interview Trump seemingly dismissed the possibility of successfully defending Taiwan, emphasizing its proximity to China and distance from the United States. 

Other supporters of Taiwan value it because it is a like-minded democracy. Taiwan’s leaders have embraced Biden’s framing that this era is “a battle between democracy and autocracy.” Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te’s predecessor, Tsai Ing-wen, wrote that Taiwan is “on the frontlines of the global contest between the liberal democratic order and the authoritarian alternative.” Trump, however, has shown a soft spot for autocrats, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, over America’s democratic partners. 

Finally, if China were to attack Taiwan, the world would be plunged into an economic crisis, with Bloomberg estimating that a war would shave $10 trillion off global GDP, causing more damage than the COVID-19 pandemic or the Global Financial Crisis. For many, the economic fallout of a potential war necessitates investing more in deterrence to prevent one. For Trump, however, the stakes may be so high that it is better to pursue a deal that takes conflict off the table. 

Some prominent Republicans, including Vance, have argued that providing military assistance to Ukraine detracts from the ability to deter a Chinese attack on Taiwan. They advocate for the United States to draw down support for Ukraine and instead surge resources into the Indo-Pacific. As Vance recently stated, “the thing that we can control now is making it costly for them to invade Taiwan, and we’re not doing that because we’re sending all the damn weapons to Ukraine and not Taiwan.” If the United States pursues this strategy but then publicly makes statements indicating it might not defend Taiwan, or if it fails to respond to serious Chinese provocations, that will deeply unsettle allies around the world. They will conclude the United States is going down a path of broad-based retrenchment and question whether they can rely on Washington for their security. 

Trump’s comments on Taiwan roiled markets and sent technology stocks sliding. More importantly, they signaled a lack of resolve that undermines deterrence and make acts of Chinese aggression that would severely undermine U.S. interests more likely. But rather than dismissing Trump’s comments, Taiwan should begin to grapple with the potential that in just six months the occupant of the Oval Office may doubt the importance of its security to the United States.