A rumor is circulating that President Donald Trump has caved to China’s most important demand: Taiwan. It’s been fueled by the usual tendency to listen to what the Republican says rather than what he does.
Trump was one of the first U.S. presidents to publicly admit that attempting to defend Taiwan from a Chinese attack might be folly. The democratically governed island is only 80 miles from the Chinese coast, with outlying territory even closer.
Defense planners in Washington and Taipei must confront an inconvenient truth, but the obstacle tells us little about American resolve in the next Taiwan Strait crisis. It also ignores the challenges Beijing faces, regardless of the U.S. appetite to fight another war.
Even the most skeptical of leaders in the White House would find it hard to reverse decades of U.S. policy designed to preserve American interests in Taiwan, both strategic and economic. A closer look at the Trump administration’s recent actions suggests his words and actions don’t match—and not in a way that would please China.
Trump Will Disappoint Beijing
Trump’s eagerness to make up with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping led to a much-publicized state visit to Beijing in May that was full of pomp and circumstance. He returned the favor last month in an unprecedented welcome for America’s top geopolitical rival.
Trump knows how much Xi wants Taiwan—control of the high-tech island would be a legacy-defining win for any Communist Party leader—so policy analysts in Washington, D.C., balked at his apparent openness to discussing current and future arms sales to Taipei with Beijing—the very thing keeping the Chinese military at bay.
China’s state media outlets rejoiced at what they saw as a return to realism: the U.S. president, who seemed more preoccupied with the Western Hemisphere and issues at the United States' southern border, was finally coming to terms with the growing cross-strait power imbalance tilting in Beijing’s favor. He was saying all the right things.
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Xi will be disappointed this month by reports that the Department of Defense is preparing to place U.S. officials at the heart of Taiwan’s military establishment to cooperate more closely on joint planning and help Taipei integrate its new American weapons systems with the Taiwanese armed forces.
The move is part of a $14.77 million multiyear program led by Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy. It elevates U.S.-Taiwan defense ties to a level not seen since the two governments shared a mutual defense pact from 1955-1979, only terminated when Washington and Beijing established formal diplomatic ties.
It was always an open secret that the U.S. dispatches hundreds of military instructors to assist Taiwan each year. The new program institutionalizes the quiet security cooperation.
But Wait—There’s More
In early October, two F-16 fighter jets landed at an air base in eastern Taiwan to supplement its outnumbered air force. They were part of an $8 billion order for 66 aircraft first approved by Trump back in 2019, adding to 150 older variants purchased in the 1990s.
The delivery, set to be completed in the next two years, was so significant that it drew a critical response from North Korea, a Chinese ally, which warned via state media that the United States was destabilizing the region.
This month, Taiwanese newspapers also reported the anticipated delivery of 128 Harpoon anti-ship missiles and 500 Stinger air defense missiles later this year, along with various munitions and aircraft maintenance contracts critical to sustaining Taiwan’s fighting power.
Elsewhere in the region, the U.S. is pressing ahead with joint training exercises with security ally Japan to prepare for a potential conflict with China, including by deploying NMESIS anti-ship missile launchers to the far-western Japanese island of Yonaguni, around 70 miles off Taiwan’s east coast, according to plans published by the town government.
At home, the FBI embarrassed Beijing by publicizing the arrest of a U.S. citizen who allegedly surveilled the Seattle-based son of Taiwan’s sitting president on behalf of China’s main spy agency, the Ministry of State Security. China denied any knowledge of the operation.
And despite concerns about what last month’s Trump-Xi summit would mean for U.S. commitments to Taiwan, the meeting produced little of note on the island.
The Chinese government said Xi warned Trump that his handling of Taiwan would affect relations between the two countries, but Trump said the leaders hardly discussed the issue. “We didn’t spend a lot of time talking about Taiwan. He understands very much how I feel,” Trump said.
Talk Is Cheap
China cares a lot more about what America’s leaders do than what they say. In December, after the Trump administration announced a record $11.1 billion arms package for Taiwan that included dozens of HIMARS rocket launchers and hundreds of ATACMS missile systems, the Chinese military described the U.S.’s decision as “extremely irresponsible, extremely dangerous and extremely harmful.”
Despite multiple attempts to get Trump to build on a 1982 U.S.-China joint communiqué that promised to gradually reduce arms sales to Taiwan, the president has yet to budge, only deepening Beijing’s mistrust of U.S. words. That’s just as well; China wasn’t planning on slowing down anyway.
Colby, the Pentagon policy chief overseeing the placement of U.S. personnel in Taiwan’s Defense Ministry, recognizes Beijing’s broader designs after Taiwan. His book, The Strategy of Denial, describes a Chinese state that intends to use the occupation of Taiwan as a stepping stone to project power across the Pacific at America’s expense.
Taiwan’s supporters can have no complaints, but that doesn’t mean they won't have any.
The new F-16s delivered to Taiwan this month arrived after years of delays, partly due to supply chain disruptions and the relocation of Lockheed Martin’s factory. While China is already testing sixth-generation fighter jets, Taiwan will have to wait longer to see its F-16 order fulfilled.
They are part of a $29.72 billion arms backlog that has remained largely stagnant for years across multiple administrations, according to a tracker built by the Taiwan Security Monitor group at George Mason University in Virginia.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that the delivery of arms to Taiwan had been delayed by factors including U.S. industrial capacity and the ongoing Iran war, which has expended large numbers of munitions like the Patriot interceptor—also high on Taipei’s order list.
Trump’s biggest test, however, is a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan that has been sitting on his desk since late last year. Xi and his officials have told their American counterparts in no uncertain terms that the deal could seriously damage the recent detente between the two governments, but any wavering on Trump’s part will be endless ammunition for his Democratic opponents.
Beijing is holding future leaders’ meetings and potential trade deals as collateral, and the White House knows that green-lighting another record sale would kill any chance of Trump meeting Xi at APEC in November and at the G20 a month later. He needs both to secure more American access to the Chinese market.
Rubio said the deal won’t be canceled, but it could be split up or watered down so Trump can keep up appearances.
David Perdue, the U.S. ambassador to China, said on X this month that Trump “is as strong on Taiwan as I've ever seen anybody.”
We probably wouldn't go that far, but Trump’s actions haven’t come close to bringing the type of doom many have feared.