Taiwan is trying to buy more U.S. weapons, $14 billion of them in fact. That’s quite a lot of money, even with inflation.
But there’s a problem. Americans don’t want to sell. Or perhaps only one American.
And while there might be a lot of political change coming to the U.S., that change isn’t going to reach the person who matters the most.
In 2025, the first year of Donald Trump’s second term, the U.S. president approved a record-breaking arms sale to Taiwan worth $11 billion. He also asked Taiwan to continue to increase its defense spending.
Taiwan obliged, passing a $25 billion special budget to fund the sale that was already passed and the presumptive next, even larger, one.
But the rumors had already started. The Trump administration was holding up approval of the $14 billion second sale, hoping to curry favor ahead of a summit in May with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
A bipartisan group of senators even wrote Trump a letter ahead of the meeting asking him to push ahead with the sale.
He didn’t.
And worse than that, while he was in Beijing, Trump told Fox News that the arms sale was a good “negotiating chip.”
Nothing has really changed since then. Trump has not approved the sale. Congress continues to protest. He continues to meet with Xi. Speculation that he won’t approve the sale before the next meeting continues as well.
There’s always a next meeting. There always will be.
All the indications are that next week Congress will look very different. The Democrats will likely win the House, and maybe the Senate as well.
But they aren’t going to win the presidency, at least for two years.
There has been a long-term consensus on support for Taiwan between Republicans and Democrats for decades. That isn’t likely to change, even though analysts recently told Domino Theory that Taiwan needs to build new ties with incoming legislators.
Renewing support for arms sales to Taiwan would be an easy way for the next Congress to build some consensus. It would also be an obvious option for Republicans looking to distance themselves from a lame-duck presidency.
Domestic, bipartisan pressure to push through more arms sales is one part of the puzzle. The other one has to come through Trump, somehow.
Trump is going to have to realize that he isn’t getting anything from Xi for holding these weapons up. There is no deliverable coming for this. We’ve already had two major summits with nothing to show.
The only achievements of keeping this sale on ice are that the U.S. is $14 billion poorer and the U.S. looks weaker on the world stage.
Meanwhile, Taiwan has already written the check. But it can’t remain uncashed forever. There are domestic alternatives to U.S. weapons.
It would be a pity to lose the business.
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