A US government funding bill for next year that was unveiled on Tuesday authorized US$2 billion in loans to Taiwan to buy weapons, but did not include grants for similar purposes that had been approved in a separate defense bill.
The Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, covering funding for the US government for fiscal 2023, allowed up to US$2 billion in direct loans to Taiwan under the Foreign Military Financing Program.
That was consistent with provisions in the Fiscal 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which was passed earlier this month by the US House of Representatives and the US Senate.
Photo: CNA
However, the appropriations bill left out a provision in the NDAA that called for the provision of grants to Taiwan of up to US$2 billion annually from 2023 to 2027 for military-related purposes amid military pressure from China.
The grants were part of another bill, called the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, that was folded into the NDAA.
US Senator James Inhofe, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was disappointed with the outcome.
“I remain disappointed that the [US President Joe] Biden administration refuses to comply with congressional inquiries regarding Taiwan’s military needs and refuses to request money to implement the Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act,” Inhofe said in a statement. “This is simply another national security misstep by the administration.”
Defense News reported that the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, US senators Bob Menendez and James Risch respectively, were pushing for up to US$500 million in grants, while US Senator Lindsay Graham advocated loans.
“You’ve got all kinds of needs. You’ve got a famine all over the world. You’ve got food shortages. I want to be helpful to Taiwan, but probably the better approach is loans,” Graham was quoted as saying by Defense News.
Despite the passage of the NDAA, grants and loans must still be proposed through appropriation bills and approved by the US Congress before Taiwan can receive them.
The Consolidated Appropriations Act provides US$1.7 trillion in discretionary resources for the US government in fiscal 2023, a news release issued by the Senate Appropriations Committee said.
In total, the regular 12 appropriations bills include US$800 billion in non-defense funding, a 9.3 percent increase over the funding for fiscal 2022.
This is the highest level of non-defense funding ever.
The bill also provides US$858 billion in defense funding, the news release said.
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
A Ministry of Foreign Affairs official yesterday said that a delegation that visited China for an APEC meeting did not receive any kind of treatment that downgraded Taiwan’s sovereignty. Department of International Organizations Director-General Jonathan Sun (孫儉元) said that he and a group of ministry officials visited Shenzhen, China, to attend the APEC Informal Senior Officials’ Meeting last month. The trip went “smoothly and safely” for all Taiwanese delegates, as the Chinese side arranged the trip in accordance with long-standing practices, Sun said at the ministry’s weekly briefing. The Taiwanese group did not encounter any political suppression, he said. Sun made the remarks when
The Taiwanese passport ranked 33rd in a global listing of passports by convenience this month, rising three places from last month’s ranking, but matching its position in January last year. The Henley Passport Index, an international ranking of passports by the number of designations its holder can travel to without a visa, showed that the Taiwan passport enables holders to travel to 139 countries and territories without a visa. Singapore’s passport was ranked the most powerful with visa-free access to 192 destinations out of 227, according to the index published on Tuesday by UK-based migration investment consultancy firm Henley and Partners. Japan’s and
BROAD AGREEMENT: The two are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff to 15% and a commitment for TSMC to build five more fabs, a ‘New York Times’ report said Taiwan and the US have reached a broad consensus on a trade deal, the Executive Yuan’s Office of Trade Negotiations said yesterday, after a report said that Washington is set to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent. The New York Times on Monday reported that the two nations are nearing a trade deal to reduce Taiwan’s tariff rate to 15 percent and commit Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) to building at least five more facilities in the US. “The agreement, which has been under negotiation for months, is being legally scrubbed and could be announced this month,” the paper said,
RSS