As Taiwan's legislature prepares for cross-party negotiations on Wednesday on a major defense procurement bill, Jason Hsu(許毓仁) — a former KMT lawmaker now at Washington's Hudson Institute — led a delegation of American think tank scholars to meet with Legislative Yuan President Han Kuo-yu(韓國瑜) ahead of the session. Speaking to reporters beforehand, Hsu warned that if the KMT's current version of the bill passes, it could affect how KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is received during a planned U.S. visit.
Resolve It Before the Trump-Xi Summit
Hsu said the delegation traveled to Taiwan specifically to engage with the arms procurement debate and Taiwan's broader defense resilience. The group — drawing scholars from the Hudson Institute, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Stanford's Hoover Institution, and spanning defense strategy, national security, and energy security — earlier met with AIT Taipei Office Director Raymond Greene before proceeding to the Legislative Yuan to meet with Han and cross-party caucus representatives.
Hsu said Washington continues to respect Taiwan's sovereign decisions but, given the increasingly challenging international environment, hopes Taipei will take on a greater share of its own defense funding. He added that demonstrating that commitment could improve Taiwan's standing in President Trump's eyes. He also flagged that the KMT's current draft may present significant practical difficulties from Washington's standpoint, and called for flexibility through negotiation. Reaching agreement on the defense budget before a potential Trump-Xi summit, he said, would send a very important signal.
Cheng's "Plus-N" Formula Leaves Washington in the Dark
After Cheng stated publicly that the KMT's bottom line of "NT$380 billion plus additional items" was non-negotiable, Hsu said she would need to offer Washington a fuller explanation. He noted that previous arms procurement legislation — including under KMT administrations — never included an open-ended "plus additional items" formula, making the concept unfamiliar to U.S. officials and in need of clarification before both sides could reach a shared understanding.
Asked whether Cheng's position appeared influenced by Beijing, Hsu said there were no concrete indications of that, and that Washington would assess each party's proposal on its merits relative to Taiwan's actual defense needs. When pressed on whether the KMT version, if adopted, could affect Cheng's planned June trip to Washington, Hsu was direct: "I think that part will indeed have an impact."
He stressed that it is entirely appropriate for the KMT, as Taiwan's largest opposition party, to exercise strong oversight over arms procurement — but that any proposal must also be feasible, executable, and consistent with established legislative precedent. Should the Legislature pass something that departs significantly from standard practice, he said, Cheng would likely face pointed questions from both congressional and executive branch counterparts during her Washington visit.
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