Written by Brian Hioe.
Image credit: 12.02 總統與美國總統當選人唐納川普（Donald J. Trump）通話 by 總統府/ Flickr, license: CC BY 2.0.
Ahead of the US presidential election, Taiwan sought to hedge bets in accounting for the possibility of either a Trump or Harris victory. Nevertheless, there was trepidation ahead of time regarding the possibility of a Trump victory, given the possibility of dangerous and unpredictable shifts in policy under Trump.
Few were prepared in 2016 for a Trump election victory, with it expected that Clinton would have an easy victory. Other countries in the region, such as Japan, were initially unprepared for a Trump victory. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, for example, rushed to establish personal ties with Trump in order to ensure that the US-Japan relationship continued to be strong. There was caution ahead of time, given statements by Trump suggesting that Japan was a freeloader on US munificence and should pay the US for its defence.
This was also the case with Taiwan. But the 2016 Trump-Tsai phone call, which occurred when Trump was president-elect, suggested the possibility of stronger ties between the US and Taiwan. Though the call failed to translate into any personal relationship, such as with Trump and Abe, ties between the US and Taiwan did, in fact, strengthen during Trump’s first administration.
But at the same time, the strengthening of such ties took place accompanied by numerous flip-flops by Trump in which he attacked Taiwan for not doing enough for its defence or suggested that Taiwan had stolen the US semiconductor industry. Trump also evidenced an unusually cosy relationship with authoritarian political actors at geopolitical odds with the US, such as Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The strengthening of US-Taiwan ties, in this sense, sometimes occurred in spite of Trump rather than because of it. However the strengthening of US-Taiwan ties could be said to be a product of structural factors, benefiting as a result of strengthened antagonisms between the US and China.
What then, of the fate of US-Taiwan ties under Trump 2.0? Many have asked the question of whether there would be any qualitative difference between the first Trump presidency and the second Trump presidency. If the first Trump presidency was restrained by some of the members of his administration, such individuals may not be present in the second Trump administration after having broken ties with their former boss.
The same structural factors that may lead to US-China antagonisms are still present, as is the possibility that Trump may unpredictably turn on Taiwan. Foreign policy was not a strong refrain of the presidential election, notwithstanding claims by Trump that he would be able to resolve the war in Ukraine and prevent China from attacking Taiwan on the basis of his ties with Xi or Putin–though Trump did also stoke fears by suggesting he might allow Putin to do what he would with Europe unchecked.
It is to be seen what Taiwan can do to manage its relationship with the US, then. It has been suggested that Taiwan may seek to increase its military budget and emphasise large arms purchases from the US in order to convince Trump that the US benefits from ties to Taiwan. More generally speaking, Trump seems to be more often convinced that historic ally relationships matter for the US in terms of how such allies contribute financially to the US rather than that they benefit the US politically by serving as regional bulwarks of the US-backed rules-based international order.
Taiwan is likely to seek to reassure Trump on trade and industrial policy as well. Namely, Taiwan may aim to placate Trump’s animosity toward Taiwan vis-a-vis claims that Taiwan stole the US semiconductor industry. This may occur through playing up TSMC’s fab in Arizona, or other points of cooperation between the US and Taiwan in the semiconductor field that allow Trump to have the optics of bringing back to the US jobs in manufacturing that he claims are the backbone of American prosperity.
On the other hand, Taiwan will also need a strategy to mitigate regional uncertainty as a result of the Trump victory. That is, whether with Taiwan or other regional actors, Trump’s initial failure to win a second term in 2020 and the coming to power of the Biden administration was seen as reassuring about US power. But after a second Trump presidency, doubts about the long-term viability of American power projection in the region will recur.
Taiwan will almost certainly seek to bolster ties with Japan, which itself will also have strong concerns for regional stability under a second Trump presidency. So, too, with the Philippines, with the Marcos administration also signaling a willingness to seek stronger ties with Taiwan.
One has seen less about the New Southbound Policy since Lai Ching-te took office earlier this year. This may be because of strengthened US-Taiwan ties in past years, which made it seem less important to strengthen ties with Southeast Asia in order to counterbalance China. At the same time, it is possible that there will be a return to efforts to strengthen such ties in light of the uncertainties about American power in the region.
Similarly, Taiwan may seek renewed efforts to strengthen ties with the European Union as another means of hedging bets. Certainly, though European power projection in the Asia theatre is not on par with that of the United States, some European countries have sought to conduct freedom of navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait nonetheless, and Taiwan may seek to strengthen trade relations in the hopes that this encourages stronger political ties.
Even so, other uncertainties that stem from a second Trump presidency are harder to quantify in terms of specific policy outcomes or shifts in international relations. Rather, the impact of the brand of right-wing populist politicking that Trump is known for will have a large discursive impact globally. During the first Trump presidency, this contributed to the rise of regional leaders such as Rodrigo Duterte. The rise of Han Kuo-yu as a pan-Blue populist candidate was also seen at the time as indirectly influenced by Trumpist rhetoric. This, too, may occur in the coming years.
Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance journalist, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University. He graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was a Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018. He is currently a non-resident fellow at the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Research Hub.
This article was published as part of a special issue on ‘US Election: Implications for Taiwan’.
Taiwan Insight 