Rupert Hammond-Chambers On Taiwan: The Fourth Taiwan Arms-Sale Freeze

Taiwan’s democracy and high-tech economy play a crucial role in global affairs and are central to the world’s embrace of a raft of next-generation technologies, including AI. It is underpinned by a security relationship with the United States that’s existed in several iterations since 1949 and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) retreat from China.

A central pillar of that security relationship is the American willingness to sell arms to Taiwan. Indeed, since 1979 it has been embedded in US law, with the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) charging the US with helping to improve the island’s ability to deter an attack from the hegemonic Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Given these circumstances, we must ask why US President Donald Trump’s second-term administration has now initiated the fourth Taiwan arms-sale freeze since 2005.

RECENT HISTORY OF TAIWAN ARMS-SALE FREEZES

US policy toward Taiwan has long suffered from a central failing: the belief that it cannot engage Beijing in meaningful and substantive dialogue while also maintaining a robust and lawful relationship with Taiwan. This position has manifested itself in many different ways — from the failure to consistently send senior US political appointees to engage with the democratically elected leadership on Taiwan, through to ignoring US law, via the TRA, requiring that America provide Taiwan with weapons of a defensive nature (highly subjective language in today’s world) to deter aggression from an expansionist CCP.

Including the current freeze, we have seen four major arms-sales freezes in the past 21 years, two under former US president George W. Bush from 2005-2007 and 2007-2008, and one under former US president Barack Obama from 2011-2015. These freezes retarded Taiwan’s force modernization, weakened deterrence across the Taiwan Strait, played havoc with Taiwan government budgeting processes, emboldened the CCP, and violated the TRA.

The first Taiwan arms freeze was the result of a refusal by the KMT to pass a defense budget during the presidency of Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic Progressive Party. Chen had submitted budget requests to the Legislative Yuan to pay for a large package of weapons green-lighted by the Bush Administration in 2001. The KMT’s objections to funding the package sound remarkably like the narratives presented earlier this year, post President William Lai’s (賴清德) initial US$41 billion special budget submission. Over 70 attempts were made to move the budget forward over two years, with some programs finally breaking free in 2006.

In Bush’s second term, while launching the surge in Iraq, his administration sought to reduce tensions on the Korean Peninsula by prioritizing negotiations with relevant parties — including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The China hawks from Bush’s first term, such as Ambassadors Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage, had moved on. That left Bush Administration leadership without a dominant voice in Asian affairs. In 2001, the Bush administration wanted to accelerate arms sales to Taiwan and made a good start. But internal Taiwan politics and a hostile US National Security Council (NSC) unwittingly conspired to undermine these efforts, leading to a halt in sales. It wasn’t until 2006 that arms sales started to move through the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) system with any urgency, and 2007 saw a series of four tranches of Taiwan arms sales notified to Congress.

Yet the progress faltered on the false premise that the US couldn’t both support Taiwan and engage with China on regional priorities such as negotiations with the DPRK. The administration believed that support for Taiwan would undermine or even scupper Chinese willingness to lean on the DPRK. In late 2007, with three Taiwan arms sales awaiting congressional notification (CN), the word came down from the White House that Taiwan CNs should be put on indefinite hold. From November 2007 to October 2008, the Bush Administration froze Taiwan arms sales. By the time the dam broke, nine programs were stuck awaiting notification to Congress.

Even then, the Bush Administration refused to notify all nine CNs at once over concerns that the total US dollar value would cause an issue with the CCP. They therefore notified a group of six programs for an arbitrary amount of US$6.4 billion, leaving the remaining programs untouched. The PAC-3 program was split in two, merely because it was deemed too provocative to notify the total dollar amount at once. The remaining programs were notified on Jan. 29, 2010, by Obama’s government, including what remained of the PAC-3 program. This significant freeze resulted in years-long delays, along with lost Taiwanese budget dollars and a steeper total cost. Meanwhile, China’s force modernization continued apace.

America’s accommodationist policies toward China reached a high point during the Obama Administration. It saw China engagement as a deliverable unto itself, and rather than producing substantive progress on bilateral issues, the policy came down to a never-ending series of engagements intended to give the relationship the optics of partnership and progress. This approach suited important constituencies, including the US business community, which saw a future in China of never-ending record profits, along with an increasingly powerful environmental lobby looking to engage China on curbing pollution and to globalize climate regulations. Obama’s government was rarely willing to entertain initiatives with the potential to get in the way of smooth China relations, including any engagement with Taiwan or selling it weapons.

The Obama Administration believed that making unilateral concessions on issues of importance to the CCP would lead to reciprocity. There was not. It was this mistaken belief that led America to halt arms sales to Taiwan for four years. There were no CNs since the Taiwan F-16 upgrade program in September 2011 — pushed through under heavy pressure from Congress led by Senator Cornyn (R-TX) — until a small and modest package in December 2015.

By this point, Xi Jinping (習近平) was general secretary of the CCP and China’s military modernization was accelerating rapidly. A halt in US support for Taiwan only increased the pace at which the military resource gap widened. Critical vulnerabilities in cross-Strait deterrence started to emerge. The arms-sale freeze was catalyzing the progress China was making in its efforts to dominate in Asia.

THE 1982 COMMUNIQUE & CHINA’S STANCE ON TAIWAN ARMS SALES

The 1982 Communique between the US and China sought to bound American arms sales to Taiwan while providing a pathway towards ending support. That commitment was conditional on the threat to Taiwan from the CCP being reduced and then halted. In essence, America agreed to stop selling weapons to Taiwan when China posed no military threat to the island and its people.

China sees only the American obligation in the 1982 communique while ignoring its own responsibility to cease threatening Taiwan. The two are inexorably intertwined, and the failure by China to follow through on its commitment to a peaceful resolution of cross-Strait differences also negates the US commitment to stop selling weapons to Taiwan.

It is essential to understand that China’s central issue with arms sales isn’t necessarily the platform or system being sold, or even the dollar value of the program(s). Rather, it’s the sovereignty conferred in the government-to-government sales process that underpins America’s security relationship with Taiwan. The sale could be a 7.62mm bullet or a fully loaded F-16 Block 70 Viper; the CCP objects equally.

The notion that appeasing China will result in a quid pro quo concession is false, as the CCP rejects outright any responsibility to change its behavior. It sees the obligation as America’s alone, and therefore devoid of any Chinese deliverables in exchange — whether to reduce the cross-Strait threat or to make a concession in another area.

This is how you get hollow promises to lean on the DPRK in 2008 and outright lies about island-building and militarization in the South China Sea during Obama’s term. There is no evidence that appeasing China on Taiwan arms sales results in improved behavior in other areas of US-China relations.

AMERICA FIRST ARMS TRANSFER STRATEGY

On Feb. 6, 2026, Trump signed an executive order to highlight the importance of foreign military sales in driving the expansion of America’s defense industrial base. The president is quite right to see the importance of foreign sales as an action that can support high-paying American jobs, lower unit costs for America’s own defense procurement, expunge Chinese companies from the defense supply chain, and urge partners and allies to accelerate their own force modernization efforts in the face of threats from China, Russia and other hegemonic powers.

Leveraging foreign military sales to bolster these efforts is wise. Taiwan defense procurement over the next three years, 2026 through 2028, including special budgets, could top US$55 billion to US$60 billion. The freezing or disruption of significant weapons buys undermines a well-calibrated Trump administration policy that is good for jobs and the American economy.

THE ONGOING TAIWAN ARMS-SALE FREEZE

In 2017, Trump assembled a serious and experienced Asia policy team with deep exposure to Taiwan. At the NSC, the State Department, and the Department of Defense, leadership were aware of how badly the arms sales process had been politicized and broken from 2006-2017. It took 12-18 months, but they got the system back up and running properly and managed to depoliticize US considerations. By 2019, CNs were starting to flow to Capitol Hill on a regular basis.

The first Trump administration demonstrated that the best course of action is to regularize arms sales, and US president Joe Biden continued to do so through his term. Given the expanding demands of Taiwan force modernization, keeping up a steady cadence of arms sales ensures no disruption to the process of enhancing deterrence. It supports Taiwan while also strengthening America’s own Indo-Pacific Command.

China continued to object, but the objections became increasingly rote and had little material impact on bilateral relations. Indeed, note that Chinese announcements of associated “sanctions” do not disrupt core Chinese interests; they’re designed primarily for domestic optics.

Trump’s meeting with Xi in Beijing this past May appeared to be mostly a non-event. There were photo opportunities and a general agreement that the trade truce should continue. However, when Trump boarded Air Force One back to the US, he started to talk about Taiwan. Xi’s entreaties over the prior 48 hours had clearly had some impact on Trump’s thinking, as he noted, “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent,” which mirrors China’s position on Taiwan’s status. Note that long-standing US policy states that America takes no position on Taiwan sovereignty, instead insisting only that all parties commit themselves to a peaceful resolution of their differences.

Trump went on to note that arms sales to Taiwan are a “very good negotiating chip for us.” That is emphatically not what the TRA says, but it is the third time over four administrations that a sitting US president has seen arms sales to Taiwan as a fungible commitment.

The last tranche of Taiwan arms sales was announced in December of last year. Media reports indicate that Taiwan has requested more PAC-3 launchers and missiles and more NASAMS, among other items, but CNs have now been stacking up at the Department of State over the past 10 months. In early April 2026, the administration was apparently ready to move forward with new sales. However, the process was frozen at that point, not coincidentally after a telephone call between Trump and Xi.

The threat posed by China toward Taiwan is acute, and still the CNs continue to stack up at the State Department. Taiwan is budgeting increasing sums of money to modernize its forces, and new FMS requests continue to arrive. This is exactly what Trump has demanded from partners and allies, and yet his government is actively blocking Taiwan’s efforts to move to 5 percent of GDP on defense (by 2030) in the mistaken belief that a freeze will improve his bargaining position with Beijing. It hasn’t in the past and it won’t now. Beijing will pocket the concession and maintain its position.

WHAT’S COMING NEXT

The growing stack of pending CNs at State is unlikely to be sent to Capitol Hill all at once but will likely be broken into smaller packages. Some may be notified as early as late September/early October after the Trump-Xi meeting in Washington, but it is possible that the freeze may be extended through the end of the year.

The Trump Administration has let the fox in the henhouse. Telegraphing sensitivity to the Chinese position on Taiwan this past spring, Trump has empowered China to affect his decisions. This rather than considering American national interest and his responsibility, embedded in law, to assist Taiwan in maintaining peace and security in the Taiwan Strait.

Trump will meet with Xi later this month, at APEC in November, and at the G-20 meeting in December. This makes for a calendar packed with reasons not to move forward with arms sales to Taiwan: the “tyranny of the calendar.” China’s sense of agency in Trump’s considerations also means that an arms sale could come with some cost to bilateral relations — we can expect a tantrum from Beijing. Trump reopened this door, and China will walk through it seeking to capitalize and spook him into further freezes and delays.

There is strong global demand for American weapons and when there’s a delay, even when resulting in an eventual sale, a customer country will end up further down the queue. Taiwan has an urgent need for weapons now, and delays result in deliveries over longer periods.

This irregular approach creates political and military uncertainty for Taiwan, and all the while the military balance across the Taiwan Strait remains precarious and Taiwan remains in need of further fortification.

Rupert Hammond-Chambers is the president of the US-Taiwan Business Council (USTBC), a senior advisor at Bower Group Asia and sits on the board of the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security.