Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs most: a reliable US commitment.
Taiwan’s security depends less on US power than on US reliability, but Trump is undermining the latter. Deterrence without credibility is a hollow shield.
Trump’s China policy in his second term has oscillated wildly between confrontation and conciliation. One day, he threatens Beijing with “massive” tariffs and calls China America’s “greatest geopolitical threat”; the next day, he boasts of his “beautiful friendship” with strongman Xi Jinping (習近平) and dangles the prospect of a “big, beautiful trade deal.”
This policy whiplash now defines Taiwan’s strategic dilemma. For Xi, inconsistency in Washington is not confusion — it is a potential opportunity for Beijing.
The most immediate concern for Taiwan is security. Trump’s national security team may be hawkish on China, but the president’s own words send mixed signals. His claim that Taiwan has “stolen” the US semiconductor industry, and his suggestion that the island must “pay” America for its defense, reveal a mindset that treats a democratic partner as a negotiable asset.
Consider his deliberate ambiguity on whether the United States would defend Taiwan. Trump prizes flexibility and wields unpredictability as leverage. But in the Taiwan context, such volatility invites miscalculation. It emboldens Beijing to probe US resolve while forcing Taipei to prepare for both extremes — an American president who might sell arms one day and trade them away the next.
America’s commitment to Taiwan is not an act of charity but a crucial test of Washington’s strategy for ensuring a free and open Indo-Pacific region. If Washington were to treat Taiwan’s defense as a matter for negotiation, every US ally in Asia would take note. A president who views security commitments as liabilities rather than force multipliers risks unraveling US-led alliances.
Economically, Trump’s aggressive trade stance toward China also cuts both ways for Taiwan. The Washington-Beijing trade war has accelerated the relocation of supply chains away from China, benefiting Taiwan’s manufacturing and high-tech sectors and making TSMC indispensable to the global economy.
Yet the US unpredictability driving decoupling also threatens Taiwan’s prosperity. Trump’s tariff policies have rarely spared allies. His hints at new duties on foreign-made semiconductors and his relentless “America First” rhetoric make clear that strategic alignment offers no immunity from economic nationalism. Taiwan’s lesson is straightforward: it must continue to diversify export markets and deepen trade ties with other democracies.
Diplomatically, Trump’s instincts make it harder for Taiwan to boost its international profile. Under President Joe Biden, the United States worked closely with allies through the G7 and Quad to underscore that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are shared global interests. That coordination gave Taipei indirect backing. Trump, by contrast, prefers bilateral deals that showcase US leverage, not collective purpose. He often sees allies not as partners but as free riders.
If this unilateralist approach takes hold, Taiwan could face a grim scenario: sharper US-China rivalry without the stabilizing framework of coordinated US-led deterrence. Japan and South Korea, wary of being dragged into a US-China clash, might hedge — leaving Taiwan more isolated just when it needs a united front.
Taiwan cannot control the impulses of a mercurial American president. But it can — and must — control how it responds.
To help offset presidential unpredictability, one imperative is to institutionalize ties with the stable pillars of US policymaking — Congress, the Pentagon, and the State Department. Expanding those linkages, especially through defense dialogues, arms co-production, and high-level exchanges, will help Taiwan hedge against sudden policy reversals.
More importantly, Taiwan must double down on self-reliance. Its shift toward asymmetric defense, civil resilience, and whole-of-society preparedness is the right strategy. Trump’s volatility only heightens the need for Taiwan to hold the line alone — at least until US support arrives, if it arrives. A deterrence posture built on self-defense credibility reduces both temptation and opportunity for Chinese adventurism.
Taiwan’s best safeguard against US unpredictability is to make itself indispensable to the democratic world. Stronger partnerships with Japan, India, Australia, and Europe can transform it from a regional flashpoint into a global stake in the balance of power. Once embedded in the world’s economic and security networks, Taiwan becomes not a chip to be bargained but a cornerstone of the free world’s credibility.
More fundamentally, Taiwan’s challenge under Trump 2.0 is to harness the deterrent benefits of a tougher US posture toward China while insulating itself from the risks of a volatile presidency. This requires balancing strategic alignment with strategic autonomy: staying close enough to Washington to strengthen deterrence, yet independent enough to withstand political mood swings there.
Trump’s unpredictability may not be new, but its consequences for Taiwan could be fateful. The island’s security, economy, and diplomacy all hinge on navigating a US policy that can suddenly shift with a social media post. The paradox is that a more assertive America may deter China, but a more erratic one could also embolden it.
For Taiwan, the challenge is not just to weather US unpredictability, but to rise above it — by anchoring its destiny to the shared purpose of the free world.
Brahma Chellaney, professor of strategic studies at the independent Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, is the author of nine books, including the award-winning Water: Asia’s New Battleground (Georgetown University Press).
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