No. of Recommendations: 7
US President Donald Trump declined to approve $400 million in military aid to Taiwan in recent months while negotiating on trade and a potential summit with Beijing, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
The decision would mark a sharp departure from US policy toward the island, which faces a constant threat of invasion by China.
A White House official told the Post that the aid package decision was not yet final.
Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping are set to speak Friday, their second call since Trump returned to the White House. The telephone talks come as the two sides seek a compromise on tariffs and a deal on video-sharing app TikTok.
While the United States stopped recognizing Taiwan in the late 1970s in favor of China, Washington has remained Taipei’s most important backer and biggest supplier of military aid.
Under former president Joe Biden, Washington approved more than $2 billion in military aid packages for Taiwan. But Trump “does not support sending weapons without payment, a preference also on display with Ukraine,” the Post noted.
It said that US and Taiwanese defense officials met in Anchorage, Alaska in August and discussed a package of weapons sales “which could total in the billions of dollars,” including drones, missiles and sensors to monitor the island’s coastline.
Since Trump returned to the White House in January, there have been growing jitters in Taipei over the strength of the Taiwan-US relationship and Washington’s willingness to defend the island if China were to attack.
Since President Trump has obviously decided not to apply incremental pressure on Russia to stop their attempt to overtake Ukraine or on Israel to overtake Gaza and threats to annex the West Bank (creating an ambiguous condition for the Palestinians in the "democracy" of Israel), there is little reason to expect the US to defend Taiwan (especially considering its ambiguous political status) at great risk of a Chinese retaliation. One wonders if, with all the private conversations with the world leaders involved in these potential actions, whether the topic of Greenland was raised.
Jeff
