In 2025, it is easy to believe that Taiwan has always played a central role in various assessments of global national interests. But that is a mistaken belief. Taiwan’s position in the world and the international support it presently enjoys are relatively new and remain highly vulnerable to challenges from China.
In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush Administration had plans to elevate bilateral relations and to boost Taiwan’s defense. It designated Taiwan as a non-NATO ally, and in 2001 made available to Taiwan a significant package of arms to enhance the island’s defenses including the submarines it long sought. After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, however, America’s attention dramatically shifted to the Middle East. Good Taiwan relations remained on the table, but bilateral ties turned sour due to a combination of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) intransigence over defense spending and then-president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) efforts to make constitutional changes. By 2005, the opportunity had passed. Taiwan was in a box tightly sealed by American officials, who had moved on to the war on terror and were pursuing peace on the Korean Peninsula. This left the possibility of a bilateral Free Trade Agreement and 8 American-built submarines in the ashes.
Former US president Barack Obama and his team arrived with little appetite for strong US-Taiwan relations. They were laser-focused on the US-China relationship, and rarely missed an opportunity to suppress American interests with Taiwan if they felt it would advance their relations with Beijing. The net result was curbed government-to-government links, little ambition in bilateral trade ties, and a nearly 5-year arms sale freeze that’s contributed mightily to the present imbalance in cross-strait security. The Obama Administration saw ties with Taiwan as a barrier to its aspirations with Beijing and worked hard to minimize US-Taiwan engagement. They believed that if America self-censored its relations with Taiwan, it could influence China’s behavior favorably toward the US. Yet that is not what happened. China’s commitment to its self-interest does not waver, and it will pocket any such concessions without offering anything in return. Additionally, China also pushes for myriad platforms of engagement to bury bilateral relations in procedure and process. As IIPS Chairman Randy Schriver has noted, it is the “tyranny of the calendar” where US government officials downplay Taiwan relations because there’s never a good time to engage given the extensive US-China meeting schedule. It’s a dead end.
US President Donald Trump’s first election represented a sea change for US-Taiwan ties, starting with a major shift in US-China relations. The first Trump administration recognized that China was squarely focused on undermining American global interests, while using access to the American market to finance Chinese civilian and military modernization. His government also took a hard look at Taiwan’s defense, returning the US to an open-door policy on arms sales that provided platforms and systems needed to modernize Taiwan’s armed forces.
President-elect Trump took a congratulatory telephone call from then Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), which he was then heavily criticized for. He sold F-16 fighters to Taiwan, an action many had argued would plunge US-China ties into crisis, but nothing happened. He sent senior political appointees to Taiwan — including then-Under Secretary of State Keith Krach — and yet US-China relations were not thrown into disaster. He prioritized American interests in ties with Taiwan, and contrary to the blizzard of criticism he received, China ties did not disintegrate. He demonstrated that the US could both have strong ties with Taiwan and maintain relations with China. It showed that this is not a choice between two options. Indeed, strong Taiwan ties instead inject important credibility into US-China relations.
The Biden Administration maintained much of what it inherited from Trump. However, the non-escalatory approach of the Biden government did end up curbing US-Taiwan ties. His administration again fell back on the ersatz elixir of believing that doing so would improve ties with China. Biden sent almost no political appointees to Taiwan, throttling the previous cadence of executive branch officials visiting Taiwan worried that it would disrupt China ties. His government also curbed arms sales by maintaining a steady cadence but heavily restricting what arms could be made available. This was partly to focus on the so-called asymmetric approach to repelling a D-Day-style attack on the island, and partly to lower the value and profile of each sale, seeing them as politically antagonistic and therefore undesirable. The censoring of American interests and the failure to bolster all of Taiwan’s defense domains came at no apparent gain to US-China relations. As the US halted efforts to support Taiwan’s multi-domain approach to deterrence, China’s threat posture towards Taiwan shifted to include blockade and quarantine scenarios.
Biden did make four separate and important contributions: He stated with clarity that the US would come to Taiwan’s defense if the Chinese Communist Party invaded Taiwan. While his colleagues walked back three of the four declarations, the candor was welcome. It is time for strategic clarity regarding American intent in all scenarios bar a declaration of a Republic of Taiwan.
The personnel who populated each of these US administrations played a huge role in determining which policies, positive or negative, would determine US-China and US-Taiwan ties. They operated under approaches that, at their core, came down to the extent to which America saw US-Taiwan ties as positive and to be supported and nurtured, or if they were in the way of engagement with Beijing and therefore to be marginalized or even halted.
All these lessons should have been well-learned since 2001, so it has been disheartening to watch the spectacle of US-Taiwan ties under serious pressure over the past several weeks.
First, we saw issues surrounding the requested Taiwan presidential transit. Transit diplomacy has been an important tool in US-Taiwan ties for decades, but it has seen controversies as far back as 1994, when then-Taiwan president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) stopped in Hawaii but remained on his airplane out of pique from being refused a transit stay by the Clinton Administration. Two years later, however, Lee was encouraged by Congress to visit the US, where he spoke at his alma mater Cornell University. The effort to appease Beijing over Lee backfired spectacularly and resulted in exactly what the US had hoped to avoid. Sensing the weakness of the Clinton Administration, China launched missiles around Taiwan in 1996, facilitating the third Taiwan missile crisis.
Current Taiwan President William Lai Ching-te (賴清德) requested a transit through New York on Aug. 4, 2025, on his way to Central/South America. There is plenty of precedent for Taiwan’s presidents transiting through New York including Tsai in 2019. However, US-China trade negotiations were ongoing in Sweden, and the second Trump Administration took a page from the Obama Administration’s playbook and denied Lai access over concerns that a transit would undermine their China talks. This is exactly the wrong message to send to China if you want credibility in ongoing negotiations. If you want to avoid a worse outcome the next time you grant a transit, as with Lee in 1996, you cannot telegraph to China that you are prepared to weigh their sensitivities so heavily when considering American interests. US Secretary Marco Rubio and his colleagues in the US Department of State know this, so it is unclear how the US could score this own goal with such experienced hands at the helm.
Second, we saw issues surrounding the tariff trade deal, which was not consummated by the deadline of Aug. 1, 2025. While the US and Taiwan have clearly made considerable strides — specifically completing the technical negotiations — the lack of an announced deal is damaging to US-Taiwan relations. Non-technical commitments, which include inbound investment into the US and increased defense spending, appear to still be in play. The ongoing Section 232 investigation of semiconductors is an added complication, given the significance of the semiconductor ecosystem to Taiwan’s economy.
The Taiwan tariff rate has been reduced from 32 percent to 20 percent, with claims from Lai’s government that the rate could drop further once negotiations are complete. Yet this is a negotiation that needs to be put to bed quickly. Further delays increase the risk that the US-Taiwan bilateral relationship will pay a political cost. When Taiwan concluded its WTO negotiations in 1998, its accession was placed on hold until China had completed its negotiations. That is not what is happening here. But Taiwan needs to approach this effort similarly to Japan and South Korea, not China. Taiwan has the agency to influence the pace of negotiations and needs to conclude this matter with all haste.
Historically, Taiwan has been able to lean on heavy bipartisan Congressional support to counterbalance erratic or punitive executive branch attitudes. Taiwan’s F-16 upgrade program, launched in 2012, was a function of the leadership of Senator John Cornyn (TX-R) in the face of hostility from the Obama Administration. Strong support remains on Capitol Hill, but Trump’s vice-like grip on the Republican Party ensures that relations between the two countries will be dictated by the White House. Taiwan’s recognition of this point is essential. It appears that the best Taiwan can hope for in bilateral relations is to respond decisively to issues raised by the US on trade, investment, and defense.
Trump has been quite clear that relations with China are his top priority. That is fine if Taiwan is supportive of his overall aims regarding economic and security relations with the US. But if they fall on the wrong side, then US-Taiwan relations are likely to deteriorate. That will leave Taiwan gasping for air and with only one winner: Beijing.
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 Project 2049 Institute.
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