The administration of US President Donald Trump is confident that China would not make a move against Taiwan during Trump’s presidency, US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said in an interview with CNBC on Friday last week.
Beijing considers Taiwan to be part of its territory and has not ruled out using military force to claim it.
On Thursday last week, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said that “China will realize reunification [with Taiwan,] and this is unstoppable.”
Photo: Screen grab from CNBC’s Web site
On Friday last week during an interview with CNBC’s Squawk Box show host Joe Kernen, Bessent was asked whether he thinks Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) would make a move on Taiwan.
“I follow President Trump’s lead, and he is confident that President Xi will not make that move during his presidency,” Bessent said in response.
On Feb. 26, prior to a White House Cabinet meeting, Trump was asked whether the US would take action to stop China from using force to control Taiwan.
“I never comment on that... because I don’t want to ever put myself in that position,” Trump said at the time.
On Monday last week when asked a similar question by local press during the White House’s announcement of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s US$100 billion investment in the US, Trump said that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan “would be a catastrophic event, obviously.”
On Tuesday last week during his US Senate confirmation hearing, Elbridge Colby, Trump’s pick to lead Pentagon policy, said that Taiwan falling to China “would be a disaster for American interests,” and that Taipei must raise defense spending to deter Beijing.
The US Department of Defense should accelerate its preparations to respond to a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan and focus on deterring conflict in the Taiwan Strait, he said.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also asked about Taiwan in an interview with Brian Kilmeade of Fox News on Feb. 25.
“We have a longstanding position on Taiwan that we’re not going to abandon, and that is: We are against any forced, compelled, coercive change in the status of Taiwan. That’s been our position since the late 1970s, and that continues to be our position, and that’s not going to change,” Rubio said.
Kilmeade asked Rubio how the US would respond if it had reason to believe that China is taking Taiwan.
The US “has existing commitments that it has made to prevent that from happening and to react to it, and that would be executed on,” Rubio said, adding that “the Chinese are aware of this.”
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Feb. 12 also said that the US prioritizes deterring war with China in the Indo-Pacific region.
However, the reality of resource scarcity means the US must make strategic trade-offs in its defense planning to ensure deterrence against China does not fail, Hegseth said.
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