Trump filled in that blank on Tuesday with characteristically blunt comments published in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek.
In the interview, conducted in late June, he cast doubt on future U.S. support for Taiwan. Asked whether the United States would come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack, he answered rather elliptically, saying, “Taiwan. I know the people very well, respect them greatly.” He then added, “They did take about 100% of our chip business,” referring to high-end semiconductors, the vast majority of which are currently made in Taiwan.
Trump went on to suggest that the answer would be conditioned on whether defending Taiwan would be a good deal economically for the United States. “Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company,” he said. “Taiwan doesn’t give us anything.”
Taipei’s representative office in Washington defended the island’s own efforts in a statement to Foreign Policy, saying, “As the threat of military coercion increases, Taiwan is doing its part by actively strengthening deterrence capabilities with the support of the United States under the Taiwan Relations Act.”
Trump’s comments undoubtedly set off new concerns in Taipei, but he has made statements in a similar vein over the past two years.
In an interview with Fox News last summer, he said, “Taiwan did take all of our chip business,” when asked whether the United States would protect the island. And in several interviews in recent months, he has stuck closer to the traditional U.S. position of “strategic ambiguity” on defending Taiwan (unlike U.S. President Joe Biden, whose administration maintains an official policy of strategic ambiguity but who has personally said on numerous occasions that the United States would defend Taiwan).
Like his recent comments, Trump has framed strategic ambiguity in transactional terms. In an April interview with Time, when posed the typical question about defending Taiwan, he said, “I wouldn’t want to give away any negotiating abilities by giving information like that to any reporter.”
While Trump’s latest remarks aren’t new per se, as his poll numbers climb higher and the November presidential election draws nearer, they highlight a critical open question: What might Trump’s approach to Taiwan look like in a second term? The answer hinges on whether Trump’s own America First mentality would dominate over the agenda of the China hawks in his national security orbit who are staunch defenders of Taiwan.
Looking back to his presidency offers some clues. Trump was inconsistent on Taiwan—he famously took a call from then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen as president-elect, breaking long-standing U.S. norms. But then he quickly tacked back to the typical U.S. talking points, recognizing the so-called “One China” policy in a subsequent call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Many of his top foreign-policy advisors were China hawks and Taiwan supporters, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo; National Security Advisor John Bolton; Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger; Peter Navarro, the director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy; and Randall Schriver, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs. During the course of his administration, they successfully pushed for more support for Taiwan, including the sale of F-16 fighter jets to the island, previously deemed to be too controversial. And at the very end of Trump’s presidency, Pompeo went as far as to cancel the rules barring direct communication with Taiwan.
“I think in the first term, you had a lot of people around Trump who were friendly with Taiwan [and] very skeptical about China,” said Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “It’s not clear, though, that that was Trump’s own personal view.”
Trump’s national security team in a second term would likely be more mixed on Taiwan, as several of those former key players have since distanced themselves from Trump, including Bolton and Pottinger. Voices such as Elbridge Colby, a principal at the Marathon Initiative and former Trump official who is thought to still be in Trump’s good graces, have called for a pivot from Ukraine to Taiwan, while others may fall closer in line with the Trump isolationist impulse.
“I think that’s the core tension within the Trump circle,” Cooper said. Which direction the administration might swing depends on Trump himself and his level of involvement. Trump has already proposed launching a new trade war with China, and he is likely to be very involved in shaping economic policy toward China overall, but it is unclear how directly he would engage in Taiwan policymaking.
If Trump’s own views were to prevail in a second term, Taiwan would likely be in for a rocky four years trying to prove its worth to the president. “Contrary to what some analysts argue, there isn’t an Indo-Pacific exception in Trump’s version of ‘America first,’” Hal Brands, a political scientist at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, argued in a recent essay in Foreign Affairs.
Under the Trump-centric Taiwan foreign policy, several scenarios could unfold. On defense, Trump spoke critically of Taiwan treating the United States like an insurance company in his conversation with Businessweek, but his comment that Taiwan “should pay us for defense” suggests he may mostly be interested in securing a higher premium for U.S. support.
What kind of payment would Trump be looking for? During his presidency, Trump called for South Korea and Japan to cover a much higher share of the costs for U.S. bases in both countries, but very few U.S. troops are stationed in Taiwan. Taipei already buys billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from Washington, but Trump might consider cutting off new foreign military aid to Taiwan approved under Biden. He would also likely push for Taiwan to increase its military spending, up from 2.6 percent of its GDP today, as his former National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien suggested recently.
On chips, the Taiwanese government has pushed back on Trump’s claims of unfairness. In an interview with Foreign Policy this month, Alexander Yui, Taiwan’s representative to the United States, said, “Between Taiwan and the U.S., we’re partners in terms of that industry. … The United States is very good at chip design, and we’re very good at manufacturing.” He also referenced the three massive semiconductor factories that Taiwanese tech giant TSMC plans to build in Arizona.
However, Trump’s repeated comments begrudging Taiwan’s semiconductor dominance suggest that he is unsatisfied with the status quo and may push for more domestic chip manufacturing. “Trump has made it clear—he’s going after chips,” said Jason Hsu, a former Taiwanese legislator who is now an Edward Mason fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. “TSMC could bear the consequences of Trump’s political rhetoric.”
A final scenario that some experts say could unfold if Trump were to dominate Taiwan policy and take it in the most transactional direction is that he could trade Taiwan’s future away in some kind of grand economic bargain with China. The terms of such a deal and its likelihood are far from clear, but experts point to Trump’s past remarks in private diminishing Taiwan’s significance as a sign that such a scenario might be possible.
But Taiwan has some “aces up its sleeve” to head off worst-case scenarios under a Trump administration, argued Craig Singleton, the director of the China program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“Taiwan’s major semiconductor investments in important battleground states, like Arizona, and its substantial military hardware purchases highlight the island’s strategic importance,” Singleton said. “Taiwan also enjoys steadfast bipartisan backing on Capitol Hill, which could prove helpful in navigating choppy diplomatic waters.”
FP’s Rishi Iyengar contributed reporting to this article.