After the 2024 election, there were widespread expectations throughout the international system that Donald Trump, in his second term, would consolidate and strengthen the existing already close security cooperation between the United States and Taiwan. The bilateral relationship had noticeably tightened during Trump’s first term, and that trend continued throughout Joe Biden’s presidency. 

Moreover, U.S. diplomatic and military backing for democratic Taiwan against its authoritarian nemesis, the People’s Republic of China (PRC), has received strong broad bipartisan support among both the American public and Congress. Washington’s diplomatic and security collaboration with Taipei had become so extensive that it began to rival the bilateral relationship during the Cold War, when the United States maintained a formal mutual defense treaty with the island.

The expected surge in bilateral cooperation has not yet materialized. Indeed, the president has exhibited annoyance with the authorities in Taipei regarding a variety of issues. Trump has lobbed allegations that unfair Taiwanese trade practices have injured U.S. firms. He also has accused the U.S. client of free-riding on Washington’s security exertions in East Asia—a point that he raised during the presidential campaign.

Conservative analysts highlighted Trump’s unexpectedly chilly attitude toward Taipei in a Wall Street Journal article published last month. They detected a marked difference in tone from his earlier period in the White House:

While Trump’s first term featured open confrontation with China, his interest in re-engaging with Beijing reflects a recognition that the hostility has become too costly for American businesses and that critical U.S. interests—from managing China’s chokehold on rare-earth minerals to stanching the flow of fentanyl—require a transactional dialogue.

The authors added that the president’s “ambivalence on Taiwan” creates a “historic opportunity for China.”

Former Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and other staunchly pro-Taiwan hardliners in the U.S. foreign policy community expressed similar warnings even earlier. Bolton’s September 24 article in The Hill asserted that Trump might be “abandoning Taiwan to China’s tender mercies.”

Trump also has shown enhanced receptivity to basing U.S. foreign policy in general on the need to negotiate pragmatic “deals” with the handful of great powers in the international system. In terms of importance to U.S. economic and strategic interests, the PRC would be at the top of the list for applying the principles of such a “transactional” approach to U.S. policy. Conversely, defending the human rights and de facto independence of a small country located barely 200 miles from China’s coast—an island that Beijing claims as rightfully part of the PRC—does not seem terribly compatible with that approach.

Trump also likely views Taiwan’s current president, Lai Ching-te (William Lai), with mixed emotions. Lai has expressed a firm willingness to back Washington’s continued status as East Asia’s hegemon. In adopting that approach, he has received firm backing from Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. However, as with previous Taiwanese governments that have favored hardline policies toward Beijing, Lai’s stance has involved more rhetoric than substance. In fairness, Taipei has extended its conscription system and made a modest increase in its defense budget. Even the revised figure still falls well short of what the Trump administration advocates, though, and what would be needed for an effective Taiwanese capability to repel a PRC invasion. 

All those factors have produced a rather lukewarm posture from the Trump administration toward Washington’s longstanding Taiwanese client. After his first summit meeting with China’s President Xi Jinping in December 2025, Trump boasted that he had received a pledge from Xi that the PRC would not take any military action to change Taiwan’s political status during the remainder of Trump’s term. In late February 2026, the administration set off new alarm bells among Taiwanese opinion leaders and the island’s passionate backers in the United States. The White House indicated that the president might be prepared to discuss with Beijing the latest U.S. arms package for Taiwan. The obvious implication was that the administration might be willing to scale back that measure.

Beijing appears to be adopting an opportunistic strategy to exploit policy differences between the U.S. and Taiwanese governments as well as domestic political divisions in Taiwan. In late March, Xi invited Cheng Li-wun, the leader of Taiwan’s Kuomintang (KMT) party—the principal opposition faction to Lai and the pro-independence DPP—to visit the mainland. Cheng accepted enthusiastically and scheduled a trip for this week.

Xi’s invitation is an attempt to restore the less confrontational course the PRC pursued toward the last KMT administration, led by Ma Ying-jeou, from 2008 to 2016. During that period, economic and cultural relations between Beijing and Taipei expanded dramatically and military tensions in the Taiwan Strait eased. Xi’s current implicit message is that if Taipei abandons its assertive policies that emphasize the island’s de facto independence, a similar quiet era of mutual benefit could ensue.

Subscribe Today

Get daily emails in your inbox

Email Address:

Beijing also may be sending other subtle signals of its desire to avoid a crisis over Taiwan—at least in the short term. In late February, a sudden, dramatic lull in PRC military flights near the island began. On March 11, New York Times correspondent Chris Buckley noted that “12 of the past 13 days, no Chinese military flights were recorded near Taiwan.” It was a dramatic change from the usual pattern.

One should not read too much significance into the gesture; the typical pace of PRC air and naval operations resumed thereafter and has continued unabated. Nevertheless, it is possible that Beijing could be sending Washington a message that the PRC is prepared to ease tensions in the Taiwan Strait if Taipei and its U.S. patron are willing to reciprocate.

Trump might be receptive to such a modus vivendi. His administration is preoccupied with the war that it launched against Iran. With the global energy markets in turmoil and crude oil prices spiking, the last thing that Washington wants or needs is a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. Trump thus has a strong incentive to put some distance between U.S. policy and the course that Lai and other hardliners advocate. Bolton and other ardent supporters of Taiwan in the United States may have good reason to fret about the president’s surprising ambivalence about policy regarding the island.