BEIJING – Despite the United States announcing a record $11 billion in arms sales to Taiwan in December against Beijing’s wishes, U.S. President Donald Trump remains uneasy silent on Taiwan after his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping this week.
President Trump said arms sales to Taiwan would be a topic of discussion in his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which ended on Friday.
But after the first day of talks between the two leaders on Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told NBC News that the topic “was not primarily a topic of discussion today.”
The White House’s initial announcement also did not mention Taiwan, home to some of the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturers, but Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC he expected President Trump to say more about the island in the coming days.
The silence continued more than 24 hours after Xi issued a public statement with a stark warning that mishandling Taiwan would put the U.S.-China relationship at “great risk.”
“This is a pretty direct and forceful comment from President Xi,” Wendy Cutler, a former deputy U.S. trade representative, said on CNBC’s “China Connection” on Friday.
“The way I interpret it, he really tied economic stability to developments regarding Taiwan,” she said.
The Chinese government’s reading of the Trump-Xi meeting, which concluded on Friday morning, emphasized the benefits of cooperation and did not mention Taiwan.
“Keep it cool”
President Trump said China and Taiwan “both need to calm down.”
In an interview with Fox News that aired Friday afternoon, President Trump insisted that the United States’ long-standing policy toward Taiwan remains unchanged after two days of talks with President Xi.
President Trump said Taiwanese people should be “neutral” about his visit.
But he also appeared to express some opposition to the prospect of the United States jumping to Taiwan’s defense if it were attacked, citing Taipei’s decision to pursue independence from China as a decisive factor.
“Let me tell you this: I’m not going to secede anyone. We have to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war,” Trump said. “That’s not what I’m asking for. I want them to calm down, and I want China to calm down.”
He added that he had not yet approved the possibility of another major arms sale to Taiwan, saying, “We may do it, we may not.”
“We’re not going to have someone say, ‘We’re going to be independent because the United States is going to help us,'” Trump said.
“Taiwan would be very wise to cool things down a little bit, and China would be very wise to cool things down a little bit. Both countries should cool things down a little bit,” he said.
Earlier, President Trump said he refused to answer directly to Mr. Xi when asked whether the United States would protect Taiwan from Chinese attack.
President Trump also said that Taiwan was not included in the discussion when he met with President Xi in South Korea last fall.
President Trump’s decision not to respond is in line with America’s long-standing “One China” policy, which leaves the status of Taiwan, which Beijing claims is its own island, undefined.
The “strategic ambiguity” approach leaves open the question of whether Washington would support Taipei in the event of a Chinese attack.
A statue of a soldier pointing a gun across the Taiwan Strait towards Xiamen on mainland China, located on Lienyu Island in Kinmen, Taiwan.
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Regarding arms sales, the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 adds that the United States will “provide Taiwan with defense supplies and services” necessary to “enable Taiwan to maintain an adequate self-defense capability.”
Maintain the status quo
Meanwhile, Taiwan said Mr. Trump and Mr. Rubio’s comments signaled that U.S. policy toward Taiwan would not change.
“It is clear that (Taiwan) President Lai Ching-de has consistently maintained that Taiwan is committed to contributing to peace and stability in the region and to maintaining the status quo across the Taiwan Strait,” Karen Kuo, a spokeswoman for the Taiwanese president, said in a statement on Saturday.
“China’s growing military threat is the only destabilizing factor within the Indo-Pacific region, including the Taiwan Strait,” Kuo added.
“If you look at all the Trump-Xi reports up until this week, and probably the last few reports since last April, what you see is that the U.S. report focuses on Taiwan to a much smaller extent,” Rush Doshi, director of China Strategic Initiatives at the Council on Foreign Relations, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Friday.
“We don’t really see any signs that there’s been a major change in (U.S.) Taiwan policy, at least since the summit,” Dorsey said.
Taiwan is a democratically autonomous island that Beijing claims is part of its territory. Since 1979, the United States has recognized Beijing rather than Taipei, recognizing China’s position that China is one and Taiwan is part of China. The United States maintains unofficial relations with the island.
– CNBC’s Eunice Yoon, Dan Mangan, Kevin Browninger and Azhar Shukri contributed to this article.
