It’s a bustling morning at the Dongmen wet market, in Taipei. Mr Yu is shouting at passersby, trying to offload his boxes of freshly steamed dumplings. In between customers, the self-professed “dumpling king” and his wife, Ms Liao, discuss US President Donald Trump.
“He’s very positive, energetic,” says Yu, handing flour-covered coins to a customer. Liao chimes in: “The dancing! Isn’t he in his 80s?” Yu nods in agreement. But asked what Trump means for Taiwan, the elderly couple is less effusive.
“With higher tariffs, prices will rise, and people won’t be able to stand it,” says Yu. “He just wants money,” Liao shrugs.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The last time Trump was president he was relatively popular, seen as a strong foil to China’s threats of annexation.
During that first term, approvals of US weapons sales to Taiwan soared, US navy movements in the Taiwan Strait increased and Trump broke with convention to accept a phone call from Taiwan’s then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), lending legitimacy to her administration.
EXISTENTIAL CRISIS?
But Trump’s return has brought a global shake-up, from the shuttering of USAID and negotiating with Russia over Ukraine, to talk about annexing Greenland and Canada, and taking control of Gaza for “redevelopment.” His messaging about support for Taipei has been mixed at best, and the island is on edge. A withdrawal of American support would spark an existential crisis.
“The Trump administration has already demonstrated that it is willing to suddenly and without warning break from decades of bipartisan US policy on China,” says Bethany Allen, head of China investigations and analysis at ASPI.
“[It] is signaling that it is excising liberal democratic values from its foreign policy calculations — opening up the possibility that US support for Taiwan may become divorced from any inherent value ascribed to Taiwan as a democracy worth preserving for its own sake.”
China has long threatened to invade and annex Taiwan if it refused to peacefully accept “reunification.” A military modernization campaign driven by China’s leader, Xi Jinping (習近平), is bringing Beijing closer to being able to follow through.
Support from the US, Taiwan’s biggest backer, is considered crucial for the nation’s survival. While the US officially refuses to say if it would militarily defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack, former president Joe Biden said repeatedly that under his leadership they probably would. The US sells Taiwan billions of dollars in weapons under legal obligations to provide it with defensive means and uses its military and foreign policy to support the peaceful “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait.
But Trump is now questioning the worth of the US’s support and floated the idea of charging Taiwan for protection. He’s accused Taiwan of “stealing” the US’s semiconductor business, and railed against trading partners – including Taiwan – having surpluses against the US. He has threatened or imposed steep and sweeping tariffs.
His stance has prompted questions about how Trump sees Taiwan — as a longstanding US friend, as a strategic asset, a business rival, or a bargaining chip with China.
“There are two areas of uncertainty — the first is how the president will assess Taiwan’s value to the US in any given scenario or contingency, and the second is whether the rest of the government is influential when it comes to Trump’s opinion on how to support Taiwan,” says Rorry Daniels, managing director of the Asia Society Policy Institute.
’NIGHTMARE SCENARIO’
There have been some positive signs. Earlier this month, after Trump met Japan’s prime minister Ishiba Shigeru, the two leaders released a statement specifically referencing Taiwan, with updated and stronger language saying the US and Japan “opposed any attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by force or coercion.”
This week the US state department removed a line from its Taiwan page that explicitly said the US did not support Taiwan independence. Both were welcomed by Taipei and criticized by Beijing.
But analysts have cautioned that these events have come from Trump’s administration, not the individual president who is prone to sudden pronouncements and executive orders that can undo decades of policy on a whim.
Daniels says key members of the administration have “more expansive views” on Taiwan and hawkish stances on China — such as secretary of state Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz — “but it’s not clear how deeply those views influence the president on any given day or issue.”
Trump’s negotiations over Ukraine have particularly alarmed people in Taiwan, who see parallels between Russia’s invasion and China’s aims. Allen says there is far less sympathy for China in the Republican party than there is for Russia. But it’s another area where Trump’s unpredictability has made people nervous, given Trump doesn’t seem to value defending democracies against authoritarianism. Few analysts think that Taiwan could be used effectively as a bargaining chip. But it’s possible that Xi could ask Trump to support “peaceful reunification” and weaken Taiwan’s position. Biden was asked and refused. Trump might agree. Or, he could go the other way.
“For Beijing, the nightmare scenario is that the Trump administration begins to support the [William] Lai (賴清德) government in unprecedented ways, a possibility that increases if US-China relations fall apart,” says Amanda Hsiao, China director at the Eurasia Group. “I don’t know that they know what Trump wants.”
Privately, government officials insist the Taiwan-US relationship remains strong and unchanged, pointing to moves such as the Trump-Ishida statement and the state department Web edits.
But worries about Trump’s “lukewarm” view of Taiwan are becoming more obvious even if the government was being outwardly reassuring, says Huang Kwei-bo (黃奎博), professor of diplomacy at Taiwan’s National ChengChi University.
“Taiwan can’t have wishful thinking that Trump, who personally hasn’t given Taiwan a security assurance since at least the end of his first term, will definitely order US troops to come to Taiwan’s aide whenever urgent needs arise,” Huang said.
CHIPS ARE DOWN
Trump’s proposed tariffs on crucial semiconductor exports have caused anger, and are the dominant topic of discussion in local media. The government has sent delegations to Washington, pledged to buy more US gas and weapons to reduce the trade surplus and vowed to raise the defense budget above 3 percent of GDP.
Semiconductors power everything from phones to cars and large weapons systems, and analysts believe a large part of Taiwan’s protection strategy comes from keeping production of its most advanced chips — which form 90 percent of the world’s supply — onshore.
This week Trump announced tariffs would start at 25 percent across the whole sector (without specifying Taiwan) and rise from there. It’s not clear exactly how they would be applied.
Trump’s team has also reportedly urged chip-making giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) to enter into an unspecified partnership with Intel’s factories. It all appears linked to Trump’s belief that Taiwan “stole US” chip tech, and what Mark Williams, the chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, says is a “gradual shift under way to rebuild chip-making capacity in the US.”
Taiwan’s major semiconductor manufacturers, including TSMC, declined to comment.
Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the US-based German Marshall Fund, says the US-Taiwan relationship will probably stay strong.
“But Taiwan will likely face pressure from Trump to accede to his demands.”
At the Dongmen market, Yu sums up the quandary. If Trump keeps supporting Taiwan, selling it weapons, holding back on tariffs, they’ll be OK. But it’s out of Taiwan’s control, he says.
“He’s unpredictable,” says Yu. “His focus is on what’s beneficial for the US, but the key point is that you don’t know how he thinks, right?”
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