As U.S. President Donald Trump conducts his chaotic Ukraine diplomacy, characterized by a seeming unwillingness to stand up to an aggressor or to defend the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity, Europeans are not the only ones who are getting nervous. Indeed, if any one population should be worried about its place in a world of growing disorder, where U.S. security guarantees no longer seem as solid as they once were, it is the 23 million people of Taiwan.
Taiwan, of course, is not even recognized as a country by most others, and any steps it takes toward that end could result in an invasion by its Chinese neighbor. Even short of that worst-case scenario, China has been relentlessly increasing political, diplomatic, and military pressure on Taiwan with the aim of eventual unification. Beijing is conducting an active propaganda and infiltration campaign and is undergoing what many consider to be the biggest military buildup in history, in part to develop the capability to seize Taiwan.
Over the past several years, Beijing has normalized once-controversial military tactics in the Taiwan Strait, with air and naval crossings of the median line more frequent than ever, naval exercises of encirclement operations, additional live-fire drills, and unprecedented ballistic missile tests directly over the island. Few expect Chinese President Xi Jinping to launch an unprovoked invasion of the island anytime soon. But few doubt he would do so if he felt Taiwan slipping away or if he saw an opportunity to do so without excessive costs, which could become the case if he came to doubt the U.S. commitment to support Taiwan’s defense.
Taiwan’s increasingly fractious internal politics put it further at risk. The relentless pressure from Beijing is exacerbating divides between Taiwan’s main political parties, with the governing Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) using it to make its case for further assertions of sovereignty, while the opposition Kuomintang (KMT) sees the need to engage Beijing. Rhetoric by both sides has become increasingly caustic—DPP chair and Taiwanese President William Lai recently spoke of hammering “impurities” out of Taiwan’s political system, while KMT chair Eric Chu compared some of Lai’s actions to those of Nazi Germany. An attempt by the DPP to recall 24 KMT legislators failed last month but was a further sign of the parties’ inability to work together.
All these developments are troubling, but by far the biggest recent factor raising questions about Taiwan’s future is the specter of abandonment by the Trump administration. During his first term, Trump was a strong supporter of Taiwan. His December 2016 post-election phone call with Taiwan’s then-president, Tsai Ing-wen, was unprecedented—the first direct contact between a U.S. president or president-elect and the leader of Taiwan since Washington recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1979. He authorized more senior-level diplomatic contacts than previous presidents, signed legislation codifying such contacts, provided billions of dollars in military support, and publicly reiterated and declassified previous U.S. assurances that the United States will stand by Taiwan. He also kept the Taiwan issue out of trade discussions with China.
But the Taiwanese are starting to notice that the second Trump administration is different, and not only because of the relative absence of China hawks or senior officials familiar with Taiwan. The main concern is that Trump—seemingly desperate for a summit and trade deal with Xi—will be prepared to sell out Taiwan to get it. In the past several weeks alone, Trump refused a normally routine request by Taiwan’s president to transit the United States, vetoed a planned visit by Taiwan’s defense minister, approved the sale of advanced semiconductors to China that had previously been subject to export controls, and imposed higher tariffs on Taiwan than on other key U.S. trade partners. (Taiwan’s across-the-board tariff of 20 percent was less than the initially imposed 32 percent but more than the 15 percent rate given to the European Union, Japan, and South Korea.)
The fear in Taipei is that if Trump is willing to do all this just to get a summit with Xi, he might be willing to further accommodate Beijing—for example, by cutting defense sales to Taiwan and formally opposing Taiwan’s independence—to have a successful one.
Unlike former President Joe Biden, and all his predecessors, Trump is simply not committed to the U.S. role in preserving the world security order or the notion that the United States should defend its democratic partners. It is all too easy to imagine him declaring that Taiwan has treated the United States very badly, stole its semiconductor industry, spends too little on defense, and that Americans should not risk war for an island thousands of miles away. According to journalist Josh Rogin, Trump once said “Taiwan is like two feet from China. … We are 8,000 miles away. If they invade, there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it.” Last Friday’s Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where Trump once again seemed to side with an autocratic leader from a great power rather than with a democratic leader of a smaller one, only reinforced Taipei’s concerns.
The second Trump administration’s policies are taking a toll on public opinion in Taiwan. Polls conducted this spring found that 40.5 percent of respondents had a negative view of the United States, up from around 24 percent in July 2024, and that nearly 60 percent do not consider the United States to be a trustworthy ally, up nearly 10 percentage points from the previous year. Some 40 percent of Taiwanese believed the U.S. commitment to defend Taiwan would decrease during Trump’s second term.
Taiwan’s options in the face of this perfect storm of challenges are limited—there is no alternative to support from the United States. But it does have cards to play.
One would be to increase spending on defense, as Lai has pledged to do, to over 3 percent of GDP—or even more if new NATO definitions of defense spending that include infrastructure are used. For now, proposals to do so are stuck in Taiwan’s parliament, with parties bickering over just how to spend the additional money, but all—including the opposition KMT—are committed to doing so in principle. Billions more in new defense spending in a special budget could be used to acquire additional means for asymmetric warfare including drones and uncrewed weapons platforms, as well as to stockpile munitions, enhance defense facilities, and expand military service and civil defense training. This would not only help make Taiwan more secure and self-reliant—which is both urgent and essential—but it would deny Trump the pretext of abandoning it on burden-sharing grounds.
Taiwan could also help ensure continued U.S. support with increased investment in the United States, particularly by TSMC, the world’s top chipmaker, responsible for 8 percent of the island’s GDP. Already, TSMC has announced commitments to spend some $165 billion in the United States, including $65 billion in the state of Arizona alone, to expand semiconductor production and the technology infrastructure (such as packaging facilities and R&D centers) that go along with it. Delivering on and expanding such commitments would go a long way to remind all Americans of the value of Taiwan as a close economic and technology partner and of the U.S. interest in helping to preserve a safe and secure Taiwan.
Finally, it would behoove Taiwan’s leadership to tread lightly on independence rhetoric or other actions that could provoke retaliation by Beijing and highlight the risks to the United States of its commitment to Taiwan. However legitimate Lai’s desire to assert Taiwan’s independence might be, now is not the time to test the long-standing hypothetical question of whether the United States would go to war to defend Taiwan.
Trump’s unreliability and unpredictability are making all U.S. partners more nervous. But a break in the U.S.-Taiwan relationship—let alone a U.S. sellout of Taiwan that might tempt China to move against it—would have catastrophic repercussions for the entire world. Taipei should do everything it can to avoid it.
The post Trump Might Sell Out Taiwan—Here’s How to Prevent It appeared first on Foreign Policy.
