The 23rd annual US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference began yesterday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, featuring discussions between officials and experts on US defense cooperation with Taiwan.
Deputy Minister of National Defense Hsu Yen-pu (徐衍璞) is in attendance, with US Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Jedidiah Royal set to speak.
The conference is to discuss five key issues, including building global coalitions, countering China’s “gray zone” tactics through government-industry collaboration, resourcing Taiwanese defense efforts, preparing for a D-Day style scenario and potential impacts of November’s US presidential election.
Photo: CNA
The conference hosted by the US-Taiwan Business Council is to include five sessions today and tomorrow, following a welcome reception yesterday.
Taiwan’s three main political parties have also sent representatives, including Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Taipei City Councilor Vincent Chao (趙怡翔), DPP Mission in the US director Iris Shaw (蕭舜文), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) and KMT Department of International Affairs director Alexander Huang (黃介正).
A key discussion point is US arms sales to Taiwan, including US-Taiwan weapon manufacturing cooperation and the effect of an arms backlog of recent years.
US President Joe Biden has authorized US$5.71 billion in arms sales to Taiwan in his one term in office, council president Rupert Hammond-Chambers said in a news release on Friday last week.
This is the lowest figure since 2001, excepting the freezing of arms sales by former US president Barack Obama from 2011 to 2015, he said.
Under Biden, arms sales have dropped each year since 2022, he said, adding that US support of Taiwanese “force modernization” has been weakening since 2021.
“It is unclear why the Biden administration is steadily reducing the value of arms sales to Taiwan,” he said. “Presidential Drawdown Authority and Foreign Military Financing are important new factors in material support, but they should be adding to the flow and not substituting for it.”
Hammond-Chambers told reporters yesterday that the reasons for the decline are unclear, as the US government says the threat to Taiwan has never been greater, and Taiwan’s military budget is expanding.
Additional reporting by CNA
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