Written by Brian Hioe.
Image credit: Public domain.
This article was originally published on New Bloom on 23 February 2026.
US PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP alarmed earlier this month after comments suggesting that he would decide whether to suspend arms sales to Taiwan after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in April.
Such comments have widely alarmed, leading to calls for a law to reassert the Six Assurances. The Six Assurances, which date from past decades of tensions between Taiwan and China, emphasize that US arms sales to Taiwan are mandated by law, and will not be suspended because of influence from China.
Trump, of course, has other ideas. Trump has seen no issue with throwing decades of diplomatic precedent over Taiwan into question in the past. Sometimes this has been through actions that upgrade diplomatic relations between the US and Taiwan, such as accepting a phone call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen shortly before he took office during his first administration.
At other points, however, Trump clearly has no objection to using Taiwan as a chess piece to be traded off in negotiations with Xi. There have long been concerns that Trump would potentially trade off Taiwan in trade negotiations with Xi.
Trump is generally thought to see Taiwan as tiny and of relatively little importance in comparison with China, with past comments by Trump comparing Taiwan’s size to that of a pen and China to the Resolute desk used in the Oval Office. Though Trump may be aware of global reliance on Taiwanese semiconductors, China may still be seen as a bigger prize.
Reports indicate that it is not simply that Trump has gone off-script yet again, but that his administration as a whole has delayed arms sales to Taiwan because of planned meetings with Xi. This proves dangerous for Taiwan, especially given domestic politics at present.
The opposition KMT, which has historically slanted toward pro-unification stances, has repeatedly sought to block the 1.25 trillion NT defense spending sought by the Lai administration. To begin with, this defense spending is required because the KMT sought to drastically cut the national budget last year, reducing 1/3rd of the government’s operational budget.
The Trump administration has sought to pressure Taiwan in past years, suggesting that it may drop support for Taiwan if Taiwan does not increase military spending. Spending targets raised by Trump have sometimes fluctuated wildly, with amounts thrown out as 5% of GDP and 10% of GDP. This has contributed to the Lai administration’s desire to increase defense spending.
The director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the US’s representative office in Taiwan in lieu of formal diplomatic relations, recently criticized the KMT and its ally, the TPP, for their obstructionism in the legislature on the defense budget. Likewise, a bipartisan group of 37 US lawmakers sent a letter to the KMT and TPP expressing concern over defense spending in Taiwan.
The KMT seemed to back down in the face of pressure, stating that defense would be an immediate priority once the legislature’s Lunar New Year holiday ended, as the first item taken up. Now, however, it is possible that Trump has given the KMT ammunition. The KMT can now point to Trump suggesting that the US may halt arms sales to Taiwan to suggest that Taiwan does not, in fact, need to buy arms from the US, as well as suggest that, on the whole, the US is a mercurial and unpredictable ally that would not be much assistance against Chinese threats.
The pan-Blue camp has increasingly leaned into US-skepticism in past years. This has occurred not only with regard to arms sales, but also trade deals, and that pressure from the US led TSMC to build large-scale semiconductor fabs in Arizona. The suggestion from the KMT is that the US is seeking to reduce dependency on Taiwan in the realm of semiconductors so that it can abandon Taiwan at will.
But Trump’s comments will probably simply give the KMT more ammunition when it comes to US-skepticism as a whole. Indeed, the suggestion that arms sales may be halted if Trump decides on it after meeting with Xi Jinping is not likely to reassure, as fears about Trump bargaining away Taiwan continue to rise. After the US capture of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro, fears in Taiwan immediately were that Trump had potentially come to a deal with China where the US could do what it wanted with Venezuela, while China could get Taiwan. Even if these views, which circulated on the Internet, were conspiratorial and overstated China’s influence over Venezuela, they reflect real fears about the US making a deal with China over Taiwan that simply sells it off.
Taiwan Insight 