Taiwan has lost Trump. Or so a former State Department official and lobbyist would have us believe. Writing for online outlet Domino Theory in an article titled “How Taiwan lost Trump,” Christian Whiton provides a litany of reasons that the William Lai (賴清德) and Donald Trump administrations have supposedly fallen out — and it’s all Lai’s fault. Although many of Whiton’s claims are misleading or ill-informed, the article is helpfully, if unintentionally, revealing of a key aspect of the MAGA worldview.
Whiton complains of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party’s “inability to understand and relate to the New Right in America.” Many foreign interlocutors have struggled to adjust to the rise of Trumpian politics in the United States. Taiwan’s challenges in this regard are not unique, but Taipei also had great success in managing them during the first Trump term. Taipei was rewarded with a regularized arms sales process, the dispatch to Taiwan of American military trainers, and high-level diplomatic engagements.
Indeed, the Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and Lai administrations have made a concerted effort to engage with prominent figures in the Trump orbit. Mike Pompeo has visited Taiwan four times since stepping down as secretary of state. Kelly Craft, Trump’s second ambassador to the United Nations, has delivered two major speeches in Taiwan. In 2023, President Tsai conferred upon Robert O’Brien, one of Trump’s first-term national security advisors and current member of the president’s Intelligence Advisory Board, the Order of Brilliant Star with Special Grand Cordon. It welcomed to Taiwan Elbridge Colby and Morgan Ortagus, current administration officials, in 2024 in anticipation of their likely roles in a then-notional second Trump term.
In truth, Whiton’s problem is not that the DPP does not understand the New Right, but that the DPP refuses to become more like it. To reckon with a “new world order” — which goes entirely undefined in Whiton’s telling but which has “at its heart” the American New Right — Taiwan must respond with “its own revised form of politics yet to be revealed.”
In other words, to keep Trump onside, Taiwan must reshape its domestic politics to reflect those of one wing of one American party — Taiwan’s own political realities be damned. This might be a recipe for short-term success but would be a mistake in the long term: The United States is polarized, its major parties are internally fractured, and the likely political contours of the post-Trump era are fuzzy at best.
More importantly, such a reshaping is simply not possible. Taiwan is a very different country than the United States. Taiwan has a relatively minuscule population, different cultural norms and practices, radically different geography, different security concerns … the list goes on.
Despite those differences, however, the two countries have much in common. Both are liberal democracies. Americans and Taiwanese alike cherish their civil and political rights. Both peoples are fiercely defensive of their unique ways of life and of their right to live life as they choose. Those similarities in turn drive shared interests: most fundamentally, a desire to live at peace in a world that is safe for democracies.
Members of the New Right often disparage neocons for seeking to reshape the world in America’s image. It is ironic, then, that Whiton is more concerned with remaking Taiwan in the New Right’s image than he is in making a hard-headed assessment of US interests in Taiwan, which depend little on the ruling party in either country at any given time.
Taiwan is a consistent top-ten trading partner and a front-line democracy in a world under authoritarian assault and occupies key geography in the US forward defense perimeter, which keeps Asian aggressors distant from American shores. Has Taiwan lost Trump? Perhaps it has lost the New Right. If so, it is not because of President Lai, but rather because the New Right cannot perceive a truth that is in plain sight: The United States has an enduring interest in Taiwan’s de facto independence. If Trump loses sight of that, too, the fault will be his and his alone.
Michael Mazza is senior director for research at the Institute for Indo-Pacific Security (formerly the Project 2049 Institute) and a senior non-resident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute.
The cancelation this week of President William Lai’s (賴清德) state visit to Eswatini, after the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius revoked overflight permits under Chinese pressure, is one more measure of Taiwan’s shrinking executive diplomatic space. Another channel that deserves attention keeps growing while the first contracts. For several years now, Taipei has been one of Europe’s busiest legislative destinations. Where presidents and foreign ministers cannot land, parliamentarians do — and they do it in rising numbers. The Italian parliament opened the year with its largest bipartisan delegation to Taiwan to date: six Italian deputies and one senator, drawn from six
Recently, Taipei’s streets have been plagued by the bizarre sight of rats running rampant and the city government’s countermeasures have devolved into an anti-intellectual farce. The Taipei Parks and Street Lights Office has attempted to eradicate rats by filling their burrows with polyurethane foam, seeming to believe that rats could not simply dig another path out. Meanwhile, as the nation’s capital slowly deteriorates into a rat hive, the Taipei Department of Environmental Protection has proudly pointed to the increase in the number of poisoned rats reported in February and March as a sign of success. When confronted with public concerns over young
Taiwan and India are important partners, yet this reality is increasingly being overshadowed in current debates. At a time when Taiwan-India relations are at a crossroads, with clear potential for deeper engagement and cooperation, the labor agreement signed in February 2024 has become a source of friction. The proposal to bring in 1,000 migrant workers from India is already facing significant resistance, with a petition calling for its “indefinite suspension” garnering more than 40,000 signatures. What should have been a straightforward and practical step forward has instead become controversial. The agreement had the potential to serve as a milestone in
China has long given assurances that it would not interfere in free access to the global commons. As one Ministry of Defense spokesperson put it in 2024, “the Chinese side always respects the freedom of navigation and overflight entitled to countries under international law.” Although these reassurances have always been disingenuous, China’s recent actions display a blatant disregard for these principles. Countries that care about civilian air safety should take note. In April, President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) canceled a planned trip to Eswatini for the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s coronation and the 58th anniversary of bilateral diplomatic
RSS