As U.S. President Donald Trump prepares for his high-stakes summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, growing ambiguity around his approach to Taiwan has sparked intense speculation across global capitals about the future of long-standing U.S. policy toward the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own.
Trump’s actions and public comments have painted a contradictory picture in recent months. In December last year, he approved a historic $11 billion arms package for Taiwan – the largest single weapons deal the U.S. has ever concluded with the island. To date, however, no delivery timeline has been finalized, and Trump has publicly confirmed he has already discussed the proposed sale with Xi. Beyond the arms deal debate, the U.S. leader has publicly complained that Taiwan “stole” American semiconductor industry business, and has repeatedly pressured Taipei to compensate Washington for its security commitments. Using the threat of steep new tariffs as leverage, Trump has also pushed Taiwan to commit to large-scale investments in U.S.-based advanced semiconductor manufacturing, and to purchase billions of dollars in American crude oil and liquefied natural gas.
This inconsistent approach has left policymakers and analysts in Beijing, Taipei, and Washington questioning the durability of the U.S.’s long-held commitment to Taiwan’s self-defense. Critics, particularly among Washington’s foreign policy circles that back strong U.S. support for Taipei, warn that Trump’s transactional approach to diplomacy could leave Taiwan vulnerable to concessions during the summit. Retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, now a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted that supporters of Taiwan are growing increasingly concerned that the island could become a bargaining chip in talks between the two global leaders.
For its part, Beijing has made clear that the Taiwan issue will be a central topic of discussion during this week’s meetings. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi raised the island’s status during a pre-summit call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, urging Washington to “make the right choices” on Taiwan policy to preserve bilateral stability, according to an official statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry. While Rubio reaffirmed in a press briefing in Rome that long-standing U.S. policy has not shifted – stating Washington opposes any forced changes to the cross-strait status quo that would threaten global stability – he did acknowledge that Taiwan would feature on the summit’s agenda, even if it is not a formal centerpiece.
White House officials have pushed back against concerns over shifting policy, pointing out that Trump has already approved more military sales to Taiwan in the first year of his second term than former Democratic President Joe Biden approved across his full four-year term. In addition to the $11 billion arms package, Trump greenlit a $330 million deal for military aircraft parts for Taiwan in November. The Trump administration has also long pressured Taipei to increase its own defense spending, a goal that saw partial progress Friday when Taiwanese lawmakers ended months of legislative gridlock to approve a $25 billion arms purchase budget. That figure fell far short of the $40 billion proposal put forward by Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, a gap that a senior anonymous Trump administration official called disappointing.
Taiwanese officials have publicly acknowledged concern over Beijing’s intensified rhetoric ahead of the summit, though they have drawn some reassurance from Rubio’s recent comments. National Security Bureau Director-General Tsai Ming-yen told reporters that while Beijing may attempt diplomatic maneuvering during the talks, Washington has repeatedly confirmed through both public and private channels that its Taiwan policy remains unchanged.
China analysts note that Xi’s core goal will be to pressure Trump to roll back elements of U.S. support for Taipei, aligned with Beijing’s long-standing position that Taiwan is a breakaway province that must eventually be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary. Since 1979, the U.S. has maintained a policy of “strategic ambiguity”: it acknowledges Beijing’s claim that Taiwan is part of China, but does not explicitly endorse that position, opposes Taiwanese independence, rejects unilateral changes to the status quo, and provides informal security support and arms to Taipei.
Analysts say Xi will likely push Trump to curb U.S. arms sales and impose informal restrictions on high-level U.S. official visits to the island, taking advantage of Trump’s already demonstrated willingness to deviate from traditional diplomatic norms. In February, Trump made headlines by confirming he consults Xi on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, breaking with decades of established policy. Patricia Kim, a China expert with the Brookings Institution’s Assessing China Project, warned that even if no formal policy shift is announced, Trump’s well-documented tendency to make off-the-cuff remarks could create unintended shifts that upend cross-strait stability.
Uncertainty over the U.S. commitment has also been amplified by Trump’s muted response to a recent diplomatic rift between U.S. ally Japan and China over Taiwan. In November, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said a Chinese attack on Taiwan would constitute a regional security threat that could qualify as a “survival-threatening situation” for Japan, justifying a military response. Trump spoke with both Takaichi and Xi that same month, but has largely avoided taking a public stance on the dispute, noting in March talks with Takaichi that he would “be speaking Japan’s praises when I’m in China with President Xi.” Additional scrutiny came after the 2026 U.S. National Defense Strategy omitted any direct mention of Taiwan.
Still, many analysts point to one key factor that may protect Taiwan from major policy shifts: its dominant position in the global semiconductor industry, a sector critical to U.S. technological competitiveness in its race with China. Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Taiwan University, noted that Trump is well aware of Taiwan’s central role to U.S. economic and technological growth, creating a baseline that makes drastic policy shifts unlikely.
Edgard Kagan, a former senior State Department official who worked on East Asia policy for both the Trump and Biden administrations and now holds the China Studies chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, added that while Trump approaches diplomacy from a transactional perspective, his administration has never treated core U.S. interests in the region as negotiable trade-offs. “The president understands leverage. My experience of being in meetings with him, he has a very, very acute sense of how to use it,” Kagan said. “And so I think that the idea that there’s going to be a trade where the president sort of sacrifices U.S. interests in Taiwan in order to get other things — I think it’s unlikely based on my own experience of how he operates.”
In the end, the outcome of the summit for Taiwan will likely be measured by the public statements the two leaders release. After Trump’s last in-person meeting with Xi in October, he claimed the Chinese leader had not raised the Taiwan issue, and that Chinese officials “know the consequences” of any military action against the island. For Taipei, Nachman noted, the best possible outcome is that the issue is not discussed publicly, or addressed only in passing.