US senators would urge legislators across party lines to support the government’s NT$1.25 billion (US$39.21 billion) special defense budget during a visit beginning today, the Financial Times said in a report yesterday.
The delegation, headed by Democratic US Senator Jeanne Shaheen and Republican US Senator John Curtis, both members of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, would meet President William Lai (賴清德) and members of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), the newspaper said.
The Lai administration’s special military spending bill is deadlocked at the legislature, with the KMT and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) proposing alternative bills with lower spending.
Photo: Liao Yao-tung, Taipei Times
The delegation’s visit to Taiwan is weeks ahead of US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), which has sparked concerns that the US leader could make concessions on his support for Taiwan.
Shaheen on Friday said “that is one of the reasons we think it is very important for us in Congress to be there, to both affirm the support and talk about why it’s important ... to see Taiwan taking these strong actions in defense of themselves,” the newspaper reported.
She confirmed that the delegation would meet KMT lawmakers to emphasize the importance of passing the military spending bill to show that “Taiwan is equally committed to an independent future as members of Congress.”
US lawmakers — including some of Taiwan’s strongest supporters — have in the past few months voiced frustration over Taipei’s failure to pass a bill to provide for its own defense, with some saying Trump could become less willing to help Taiwan as a result, the Financial Times said.
“I’m concerned about his [Trump’s] commitment to reinforcing the United States’ support for Taiwan and not undermining their sovereignty,” Shaheen was quoted as saying.
Curtis said that the delegation intends to address the stalling of the special defense budget at the Legislative Yuan.
“Taiwan’s consideration of ... President Lai’s budget is so critical,” Curtis was quoted as saying. “Literally, if we did nothing else other than to emphasize over there how important that is, that would be a big reason for going.”
The Trump administration has repeatedly said that it has not changed its stance on Taiwan amid speculation in Washington that the US could concede to Beijing’s demand to say that it “opposes” Taiwanese independence, the Financial Times reported.
However, the Trump administration has not notified the US Congress on the US$11.1 billion arms sale package to Taiwan or another package worth at least US$13 billion it is reportedly working on, seemingly delaying it to after the US president’s visit to China, it said.
Curtis was quoted as saying that it was important for Taiwan and China to not overreact to the US visits across Asia, adding that Washington needs to maintain good ties with Beijing.
“I like to describe our relationship with China like a marriage. It needs marriage counselling, but not a divorce,” the Financial Times quoted him as saying.
“If there is marriage counselling going on with the presidents of our two countries, that is healthy, because there is no world where this world is safe if we do not have a good relationship with China,” he said.
The delegation leaders confirmed that they would also meet South Korean President Lee Jae-myung in Seoul and US Indo-Pacific Command Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo in Hawaii.
The delegation would ask Paparo to assess the impact of the US-Iran conflict on US defensive posture in the Indo-Pacific region and what type of support China is giving Iran, Shaheen told the Financial Times.
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest foundry service provider, yesterday said that global semiconductor revenue is projected to hit US$1.5 trillion in 2030, after the figure exceeds US$1 trillion this year, as artificial intelligence (AI) demand boosts consumption of token and compute power. “We are still at the beginning of the AI revolution, but we already see a significant impact across the whole semiconductor ecosystem,” TSMC deputy cochief operating officer Kevin Zhang (張曉強) said at the company’s annual technology symposium in Hsinchu City. “It is fair to say that in the past decade, smartphones and other mobile devices were
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS