As President Donald Trump prepares to travel to Beijing for a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he has confirmed at the White House that arms sales to Taiwan will be directly on the agenda when the two leaders meet. That confirmation alone signals that a foundational pillar of U.S.-Taiwan relations — one that has held firm for over four decades — may be about to crack.
The Six Assurances, first articulated by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, have long served as a cornerstone of American policy toward Taiwan. The most critical of those commitments is unambiguous: the United States will not consult with Beijing before deciding whether to sell arms to Taiwan.
The moment Trump sits across from Xi and discusses what weapons, if any, Washington will sell to Taipei, that assurance is effectively voided — not by accident, but by deliberate choice.
Congress pushed back swiftly. Eight senators from both parties — six Democrats and two Republicans — sent an urgent letter to Trump demanding formal congressional notification on a pending US$14 billion arms package for Taiwan. The episode exposed a widening rift within the administration itself: White House aides have been pressing Taiwan to increase defense spending, while the State Department insists the summit represents no change in Taiwan policy. Both statements cannot simultaneously be true.
How Trump Has Already Been Eroding the Six Assurances
This is not the first time Trump has crossed this line. In February, when asked aboard Air Force One whether Xi had urged the United States to exercise caution on arms sales to Taiwan, Trump replied: "We're talking about it" — and added that "a decision will be made soon."
In March, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration had quietly delayed approximately US$13 billion (roughly NT$410 billion) in planned arms transfers to Taiwan, a decision timed to smooth the path for the Beijing summit. The implicit logic was transactional: continued arms sales to Taiwan would prompt Beijing to withhold agricultural purchases — beef, soybeans — and Boeing aircraft orders from American exporters.
What Xi Wants and Why Trump May Yield
Xi Jinping enters this summit with clear priorities and characteristic discipline. Taiwan is Beijing's paramount interest, and Xi has at least three specific outcomes he can press for: a U.S. delay or cancellation of arms sales to Taiwan; a shift in American language from "not supporting" Taiwan independence to actively "opposing" it; or the signing of a so-called Fourth Communiqué that would further constrain Washington's freedom of action on Taiwan.
Of these, suspending arms sales is the most measurable, the most durable in its consequences, and the most direct lever Beijing can pull on Washington's Taiwan policy.
Trump, by contrast, arrives in Beijing carrying significant political burdens. His effort to broker a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire has stalled. The United States remains entangled in confrontation with Iran. His signature reciprocal tariff policy was struck down by the Supreme Court. And with midterm elections approaching, the political premium on delivering visible economic wins — particularly trade deals that benefit American farmers and manufacturers — is rising sharply.
The business delegation accompanying Trump to Beijing reflects these priorities: it includes Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, among more than a dozen corporate leaders. Conspicuously absent is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. The message is unmistakable — trade and investment, not technology or security, are Trump's primary currency in Beijing.
Trump's view of Taiwan has never been sentimental. He has called Taiwan a country that "stole" American chip business. Before his election in September 2024, he told the Washington Post that China would eventually take Taiwan — just not while he was president — and argued that Taiwan should raise defense spending to ten percent of GDP because it sits "9,000 miles from the U.S." and only "100 miles from China."
The massive investment commitments by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and other Taiwanese firms in the United States have been welcomed in Washington, but they have also eroded Taiwan's strategic leverage: the "silicon shield" is thinning. Trump's willingness to put arms sales on the table with Xi confirms what many in Taipei have quietly feared — that Taiwan is a bargaining chip in the U.S.-China relationship, not an ironclad partner.
Why Beijing Won't Forget the Last Time
During his first term, Trump visited Beijing and was treated to an imperial reception at the Forbidden City. Shortly after returning to Washington, he designated China a "revisionist power" in the National Security Strategy and launched a sweeping tariff war.
Beijing's decision-makers have not forgotten that sequence. When Trump escalated tariffs in his second term, China declared it would fight to the end — and demonstrated that it could, deploying restrictions on rare earth exports that struck directly at American industrial vulnerabilities.
The same dynamic now applies to Taiwan. For half a century, every American president — regardless of party — operated under an unspoken rule: decisions on arms sales to Taiwan are made unilaterally by the United States, and Beijing has no seat at that table.
The moment Washington and Beijing begin "discussing" Taiwan's defense needs, the United States has implicitly conceded that China has a legitimate voice in the outcome. Trump has now broken that long-standing norm — precisely the kind of institutional guardrail he has elsewhere derided as the work of the "deep state."
Taiwan Has Been Compliant. Has It Bought Anything?
Trump's pressure on Taiwan has been relentless, escalating across multiple fronts: higher tariffs on Taiwanese exports; demands that TSMC shift the majority of its production to the United States on roughly a fifty-fifty basis; calls to raise Taiwan's defense budget from 2.5 percent of GDP to ten percent; the withholding of agricultural and food approval rights; and a refusal to allow President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) to transit through New York.
Taipei's response has been one of near-complete accommodation. President Lai has pledged to increase defense spending, announced the construction of a layered air defense system — branded "T-Dome" — and committed to supplementing the regular defense budget with a special defense appropriation. He has, in short, given Washington much of what it asked for.
The question that now demands an answer is whether that compliance has purchased any meaningful protection against being sidelined at the Trump-Xi table.
Taiwan Needs a Plan B and the Clock Is Running
The Lai administration has projected calm in the face of growing alarm. International media have been less sanguine. The Economist recently ran a major report under the headline "What is Taiwan's Plan B?" — analyzing the growing probability that Trump's transactional instincts could lead Washington to sacrifice Taiwan's interests, and arguing that Taipei needs contingency strategies to hedge against the risk of American abandonment.
The concern is well-founded. What happened in this round of the Trump-Xi summit — a public confirmation that arms sales to Taiwan are now subject to bilateral U.S.-China negotiation — is likely a first move, not a final one. Trump and Xi are expected to meet at least three more times this year, and by all indications, Taiwan will be on the agenda at each encounter.
The Lai government has positioned itself as Washington's most reliable partner in the region and has been conspicuous in projecting the strength of that relationship domestically. If that relationship is as close as advertised, the administration should have had advance intelligence on the direction of the Beijing summit — and should already have contingency plans in place.
The moment to release them, or at a minimum to signal their existence, is now. Taiwan's public deserves more than reassuring silence.
