WASHINGTON/TOKYO/TAIPEI — As former President Donald Trump gains momentum in his bid for a return to the White House, observers are examining how a potential Trump presidency affects Taiwan policy and whether it changes Beijing’s calculations, including the time line for China’s publicly stated desire for unification.
“During the majority of the Trump administration, one of the worst kept secrets in Washington was that Trump didn’t care about Taiwan,” Evan Medeiros, former National Security Council senior director for Asia under President Barack Obama, told Nikkei Asia. “There were some rumors that, in fact, he even said that during meetings with Chinese officials.”
Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton wrote in his 2020 memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” that one of Trump’s favorite comparisons was to point to the tip of one of his Sharpies and say, “This is Taiwan,” then point to the historic Resolute desk in the Oval Office and say, “This is China.”
Robert Sutter, a former U.S. government official and professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, recently wrote a commentary for the National Bureau of Asian Research noting that President Joe Biden’s commitment to defending Taiwan using American forces if it were attacked by China — he has done so publicly four times — has served as a strong deterrent to Beijing.
“Biden’s extraordinary posture on coming to Taiwan’s assistance if it is attacked shows that this administration is more likely than any since the depths of the Cold War to become directly involved in countering an attack by China with military force,” he wrote.
Sutter told Nikkei in an interview that Biden’s firm stance on Taiwan has affected other American allies and partners, especially Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
“Why does Marcos risk what he’s risking vis-a-vis China?” Sutter asked, regarding Manila’s shift away from Beijing and tilt toward Washington. “If you’re looking at your self-interest, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. But if you feel confident [about the U.S. position], then it makes sense.”
If there is less clarity under Trump, views toward the U.S. may change.
Medeiros agreed. “Four times Biden has said that he will come to the defense of Taiwan,” he said. “One time you can explain away. Maybe two. Not four.”
Medeiros, now a professor at Georgetown University, said Biden’s statements have “forced the Chinese to have to think for the second or third time about military options, because under Biden it’s pretty clear what the United States will do.”
In Taiwan, a comment made by Trump in a July 2023 interview with Fox News still lingers in the minds of many observers.
When asked by anchor Maria Bartiromo whether the U.S., under a potential second Trump presidency, would protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression, even if it meant going to war with China, the Republican former president did not give a direct answer.
“I don’t want to say it because if I’m in the position of president, I don’t want to say what I’m thinking,” he replied.
“If I answer that question, it will put me in a very bad negotiating position,” Trump said. “With that being said, Taiwan did take all of our chip business. We used to make our own chips. Now they’re made in Taiwan.”
“We should have stopped them,” he added. “We should have taxed them. We should have tariffed them.”
Pan Chao-Min, a political scientist at Taiwan’s Tunghai University, told Nikkei that in a Trump presidency, criticism of Taiwan’s chip industry is likely to intensify.
Trump’s Taiwan policy is “based on ‘America First,’ American interests and even personal electoral interests,” Pan said, adding that he fears Taiwan may be used as a quid pro quo for an agreement with China.
Taiwanese officials have been more diplomatic in their choice of words. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Jeff Liu told Nikkei that Taiwan-U.S. relations have received cross-party support from successive U.S. administrations.
“Taiwan-U.S. economic and trade relations have close cooperation, and the economic, trade and industrial structures of the two sides are complementary and mutually beneficial,” he said.
Shuhei Yamada, a specially appointed professor at J.F. Oberlin University in Tokyo, disputed Trump’s claim that Taiwan “took” America’s chip industry, saying the development has been more like a “three-legged race,” with both sides helping each other.
Leading Taiwanese chip company TSMC was set up in 1987 with a new “foundry” business concept, which meant it focused on making chips designed by other players. This came a year after the 1986 U.S.-Japan chip agreement under which Japan, at the insistence of the U.S., agreed to limit its exports of semiconductors, mainly dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, to America.
U.S. chip companies turned to TSMC to produce chips designed by them.
This was amid the growing demand from Silicon Valley tech startups that wanted supplies of advanced chips but did not want the heavy cost of operating huge factories, Yamada said.
“TSMC was a force that supported the growth of companies such as Apple or Nvidia,” said Yamada, as they were able to focus their resources on creating more innovative services or design. He estimates that 70% of TSMC sales are to tech companies in North America. “The notion that Taiwan took jobs from America defies the facts of history.”
Despite his grievances toward Taiwan’s dominance in advanced chips, “Trump has never come out and said that he would not defend Taiwan,” Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific program, said at a recent event at the Hudson Institute. “And I think that’s important.”
Glaser also said Beijing recently has focused on stabilizing relations with the U.S. and would continue doing so for the time being, whoever is in the White House.
She noted that a debate exists in China about whether Biden or Trump would be better for Beijing.
“Donald Trump, they see as transactional,” Glaser said. “They were successful in dealing with him up until the COVID pandemic broke out. They know that he doesn’t attach great importance to allies — which, of course, President Biden has — and they believe that Donald Trump doesn’t attach much significance to the U.S.-Taiwan relationship in general. For all those reasons, some people prefer Trump.”
Yet many Chinese experts also think that after a successful meeting between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping in California last November, “they want to sustain this and are not confident that they will have this predictability when President Trump is elected,” she said. “Therefore, they would like to see Biden reelected.”
Medeiros said the Chinese view a Trump presidency as a “huge opportunity to gain international influence.”
Trump is a leader who will “take actions that reduce American standing in the world, reduce American influence, pull back from allies,” he said. “There were lots of rumors about a withdrawal from NATO and from the Korean Peninsula during the first Trump administration.”
Even if a Trump presidency does not immediately change China’s calculations for a Taiwan operation, there will be implications, Medeiros said.
“If you have a Taiwan that is nervous and Taiwan that feels vulnerable, then China can exploit that while Trump fails to reassure them,” he said.
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