https://link.foreignpolicy.com/view/644279f41a7f1f1e29de6831ovve2.gfl/40d41729
Taipei Faces Trump Pressure
Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te talks with representatives from Lockheed Martin in Taipei, Taiwan, on Sept. 19, following news that U.S. President Donald Trump had declined arms sales to Taiwan.Daniel Ceng/Anadolu via Getty Images
Months into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, Taiwan faces double pressure. As Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly lobbies Trump to formally oppose Taiwanese independence, the White House is pushing Taiwan to move a significant portion of its semiconductor industry to the United States in return for protection against China.
Previously, there had been speculation among observers about so-called grand bargains that could be struck between Trump and Xi, but none has ever materialized. Trump’s record of keeping up his end of deals is bad, and it would take surprising naivete for China to make concessions in return for his promises—or to expect a future U.S. administration to stick to this position.
Xi has had some diplomatic success with Trump of late, but getting the United States to actively oppose Taiwanese independence is unlikely. Though Trump doesn’t seem to give a damn about Taiwan, many Republicans do, and the move would be seen unequivocally as a capitulation to China.
However, Taiwan now lacks allies in the White House. Ardent China hawks of Trump’s first term—Mike Pompeo, Mike Gallagher, and Matt Pottinger among them—have largely been replaced with younger isolationists. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, once considered a stalwart ally to Taiwan, seems mostly interested in chasing the approval of the president.
So where does this leave Taiwan? One option it has is to try to curry favor with Trump, possibly by going along with his plans for the moment even if they make no long-term sense.
To be clear, moving Taiwan’s semiconductor industry to the United States is a practical impossibility because it depends so heavily on local material technology, supply chains, and expertise. Taiwanese staff won’t move to the United States en masse, especially after seeing what happened to South Koreans working for Hyundai in Georgia.
But the inanity of Trump’s plan could stretch out talks long enough to make it moot. Taiwan could pretend to show interest in a plan, make some token investments in the United States, and wait until Trump gets distracted and moves on to something else.
Another approach would be for Taiwan to pay Trump off another way, either directly or with political favors. Taiwan just inked a significant soybean deal with the United States, for instance, which will offer some help to struggling U.S. farmers (although hardly enough to compensate for the loss of tens of billions of dollars in Chinese soybean sales).
The most practical approach might be for Taiwan to leverage existing relationships on Capitol Hill to put pressure on the White House to continue arming Taipei and at least implicitly guaranteeing its defense. Taiwan still has many friends on both sides of the aisle, such as Republican Sen. Roger Wicker, who recently visited and described it as a “free country.”
Moreover, if Taiwan can find a way to get President Lai Ching-te—a Harvard University graduate and fluent English speaker—face time with Trump, then it has a good shot of repairing relations.
In the long term, though, if Taiwan can’t trust the United States as a security partner, then it might begin real discussions about restarting its own nuclear weapons program—abandoned in the 1980s under U.S. pressure.