In the lead-up to the 2020 US presidential election, more Taiwanese were rooting for then-US president Donald Trump than his eventual successor, Joe Biden, a YouGov poll showed at the time. If Trump is declared the Republican nominee for president in 2024, they might want to think twice about backing him again.
Taiwanese support for Trump derived from a belief that he was “on their side,” a view ostensibly backed by the US’ pro-Taiwan policies during his term, including an increase in US arms sales to Taipei and high-profile visits to the nation by senior Trump administration officials.
However, Trump’s support for Taiwan was not altruistic. Rather, it was driven by a desire to gain leverage over Beijing on issues such as trade and North Korea.
The risk for Taiwan if Trump wins the Republican nomination and retakes the White House in two years is that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) might see an opportunity to forcefully take the nation, based on the belief that Trump would do nothing to stop him, including refraining from imposing crippling sanctions of the kind the US and Europe have levied against Moscow after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine.
Insight into what Trump really thinks about Taiwan has come from several books, including journalist Josh Rogin’s Chaos Under Heaven: Trump, Xi, and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century, which quotes Trump as telling a shocked Republican US senator that as Taiwan was so close to China and almost 13,000km from the US, should an invasion occur “there isn’t a f***ing thing we can do about it.”
Trump-appointed former US national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his memoir that Trump considered Taiwan to be relatively insignificant, once comparing it to the tip of a Sharpie felt-tip pen.
The first three years of the Trump administration were focused on negotiating a trade pact with China that would deliver a big “win” for the US — and be Trump’s ticket to re-election in 2020. During that time, Trump was open to giving favors to Xi, often at the expense of Taiwan, Rogin wrote.
Efforts to restart negotiations on a free-trade pact with Taiwan also stalled under Trump-appointed former US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, who was concerned about upsetting Beijing and undermining two years of negotiations on the China trade deal.
The friendship between Trump and Xi came to an abrupt end after COVID-19 spread from China to the rest of the world.
Trump’s botched response to the ensuing pandemic — which he vociferously blamed on China — contributed to his losing the 2020 election to Biden. Ever since, there has been a lot of speculation over Xi’s timetable for taking Taiwan — by force if necessary — with estimates ranging from five to 10 years. One school of thought says Xi might have a “now or never” window to take Taiwan given that he has secured a norm-breaking third term and might need a distraction from a raft of problems ranging from demographic decline to a slowing economy.
Biden has, on multiple occasions since being elected, said the US military would support Taiwan in a conflict with China. While some analysts said these statements were mistakes by the gaffe-prone Biden, given the official US stance of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, they were just as likely deliberate attempts to send a message to Xi to dissuade him from using force.
While Xi might think twice about moving against Taiwan while Biden is in charge, that calculation might change if Trump were to be back in the Oval Office. Known for opposing foreign military adventures, Trump has questioned his own defense chiefs about the benefit of having US troops stationed in allies such as South Korea, and even asked them “what do we get” from protecting Taiwan in a meeting in January 2018, journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his book Fear: Trump in the White House.
The “silicon shield” theory states that the US would be forced to come to Taiwan’s aid in a cross-strait conflict to protect the supply chain for semiconductors, which are critical for powering the high-tech economy.
Trump might not agree with the theory, but he does seem to understand the impact that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would have on the global semiconductor supply chain. In a telephone call with professional golfer John Daly in March, Trump said: “You won’t have any computer chips” because China would “blow them off the face of the Earth.”
Craig Addison is a journalist and documentary filmmaker. His Silicon Shield documentary is available on Vimeo on Demand.
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