Brahma Chellaney On Taiwan: Taiwan risks becoming a bargaining chip in Trump’s China pivot

The most troubling message coming out of Washington for Taipei is not any single statement but the cumulative effect of a series of signals suggesting that US President Donald Trump is rethinking Taiwan’s strategic value while viewing the US-China relationship through the lens of a transactional great-power bargain. The danger behind Trump’s new softness toward Beijing is a potential US-China bargain that undermines Taiwan’s core interests.

During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) recent state visit to Washington, Trump and Xi appeared to rewrite the history of World War II.

In a Sept. 25 fact sheet on Xi’s visit, the White House said, “The two leaders recalled that the US and China were allies in World War II and fought side by side to win the war.” At a welcome ceremony for Xi on Sept. 24, Trump claimed that the pursuit of “common interests … even made us allies in World War II.” Xi echoed the theme later at the state dinner, contending that China and the US had fought “shoulder to shoulder against fascist aggression” by Japan.

America’s wartime ally, however, was the Republic of China, then governed by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). The communist People’s Republic of China did not emerge until October 1949, more than four years after the war ended. Chinese communists did participate in guerrilla warfare against imperial Japanese forces as part of the nominal “Second United Front” with the KMT. But Washington’s diplomatic recognition, military assistance and formal alliance were with Chiang’s government, which later relocated to Taiwan.

By speaking of America’s wartime alliance in a way that connects it to Chinese communist rule, Trump not only walked into Xi’s diplomatic trap but also is unwittingly helping Beijing appropriate history. Such historical distortion is only one part of the problem. Trump’s inclination to treat Taiwan as a negotiating asset underscores the larger challenge.

Taipei naturally is concerned that Washington has delayed pending foreign military sales to Taiwan, or has discussed the scope of such arms sales with Xi, as leverage in negotiations with Beijing over tariffs, trade, technology and rare earths. No less striking is US Ambassador to China David Perdue’s confirmation that Trump had floated the idea of selling American military equipment to China, America’s principal strategic rival.

The message this sends Taiwan is that US security commitments may no longer be insulated from US-China economic bargaining.

The contrast with the Biden administration is also worth noting. Former US president Joe Biden repeatedly said the US would defend Taiwan militarily if China attacked. Trump has instead emphasized the physical distance separating America from Taiwan, asking why Americans should fight a war “9,500 miles away.” He has also urged Taiwan to “cool it” and warned against steps toward formal independence, effectively echoing Xi’s own rhetoric.

At the same time, Trump’s economic rhetoric has challenged another pillar of Taiwan’s security: its semiconductor industry.

For years, Taiwan’s semiconductor dominance has been described as a “silicon shield.” This is because the global economy’s dependence on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) makes Taiwan’s security a vital interest for the US and other democratic nations.

But Trump has repeatedly complained that Taiwan “stole” America’s chip business and has suggested that Taiwan should effectively pay the US for its defense. His administration has also used tariffs to extract trade and investment concessions from Taipei.

Taipei thus faces a jarring paradox: The very economic strength that was supposed to make Taiwan indispensable is increasingly being portrayed in Washington as evidence that Taipei has benefited at America’s expense.

Meanwhile, Trump’s demand that Taipei raise military expenditure dramatically is adding another layer of uncertainty. Taiwan is already starting to do more to defend itself. But when such a demand is accompanied by ambiguity over the durability of US security commitments, it risks creating an impression that American protection is conditional.

These developments point toward “strategic transactionalism” — a shift from viewing Taiwan principally through the prism of democratic values, regional stability and a rules-based order toward seeing its security as one variable in a much broader US negotiation with Beijing.

Trump has already elevated China to America’s peer. By repeatedly framing the US-China relationship as a G2, or Group of Two, Trump is implicitly granting China recognition as an equal great power. Xi has long promoted a “new model of major-country relations” in which the US and China co-manage global affairs while respecting each other’s “core interests,” a term that for Beijing includes Taiwan.

If Washington were to accept such a framework, Taiwan could find itself caught on the wrong side of a great-power bargain. The danger is not an explicit American abandonment of Taiwan but a subtle and gradual normalization of the idea that the US and China have separate spheres of influence.

That scenario could also weaken the coalition on which Taiwan’s security depends. Taiwan’s deterrence depends on the ability of the US, Japan, Australia, European democracies and other partners to convince Beijing that aggression would impose prohibitive costs. If Washington increasingly conducts bilateral deals with Beijing without consulting its allies, those partners may become less certain that their own interests will be protected in a Taiwan crisis.

Against this backdrop, Taipei needs to draw the appropriate lesson and strengthen its own capacity to deter aggression. That means accelerating the implementation of an asymmetric defense strategy built around mobile, survivable and mass-producible systems. It means strengthening reserves, civil defense and critical infrastructure so that Taiwan can withstand a blockade, cyberattacks and other forms of coercion.

Diversifying trade and supply chains, particularly across the Indo-Pacific, can likewise reduce Taiwan’s vulnerability to economic pressures.

If Taiwan is to become less exposed to the vagaries of any one president, whether in Beijing or Washington, it should make itself harder to coerce, harder to isolate and harder to bargain away.

Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of strategic studies at the independent Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).