{"id":11323,"date":"2026-05-13T18:43:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T18:43:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/taiwan-is-a-model-ally-not-trade-bait\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T18:43:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T18:43:26","slug":"taiwan-is-a-model-ally-not-trade-bait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sawahsolutions.com\/range\/taiwan-is-a-model-ally-not-trade-bait\/","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan is a \u2018model ally,\u2019 not trade bait"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Taiwan is everything Donald Trump says he wants in an ally. It is investing unprecedented sums in its own defense, including billions spent on American-made weapons. It manufactures the world\u2019s most advanced semiconductor chips, which power U.S. commercial products and cutting-edge weapons, such as the F-35 stealth fighter.<\/p>\n

As Trump heads to Beijing this week for a summit with Xi Jinping, the question is whether the U.S. president recognizes that Taiwan is a \u201cmodel ally\u201d\u2014a term his administration has applied to Israel, South Korea, and other countries\u2014and will resist the temptation\u00a0to trade its security for Xi\u2019s hollow promises to import more U.S. goods and allow American firms to purchase more of the critical minerals whose supply China nearly monopolizes.<\/p>\n

Taiwan demonstrates the success American partnership can bring to a hungry country. It is a vibrant democracy of 23 million that earns that holds free and fair elections, has peaceful transfers of power, an independent judiciary, free press. It also has a vigorous civil society that has consistently chosen self-government over absorption into a Chinese system whose autocratic rule over Hong Kong shows what unification looks like. The contrast with the People’s Republic of China could not be more stark or more relevant. Amid a global competition between free nations and aggressive dictatorships, Taiwan stands firm. It reflects the world the United States is trying to build and sustain.<\/p>\n

Likewise, Taiwan\u2019s contributions to American prosperity are so fundamental that their loss would reverberate through every sector of the U.S. economy. Two Taiwanese companies, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and United Microelectronics Corporation \u00a0together account for nearly three-quarters of the semiconductor chips produced world-wide. TSMC alone produces about 90 percent\u00a0of the world’s most advanced logic chips. These components run every smartphone, every data center, every AI application, and every advanced weapon that gives the United States military its battlefield advantage. The algorithms that power American intelligence analysis also run on Taiwanese chips. Last year, Taiwan exported\u00a0about $200 billion of goods to the United States of which $150 billion was advanced computing components. \u00a0These components, in turn, were used to manufacture trillions of dollars of U.S.-made products. This is what a secure supply chain looks like.<\/p>\n

Taiwan has doubled down on this economic commitment by pledging\u00a0more than $500 billion in foreign direct investment in the United States, $250 billion of which will be in advanced computing, artificial intelligence, and other innovation efforts. This is a far greater per capita investment than any other Asian or European partner. It is not the behavior of a free-rider, but of a partner investing its capital in an enduring alliance.<\/p>\n

The Chinese Communist Party is desperate to subjugate Taiwan, whose very existence is a visible reminder that Chinese people can have both freedom and prosperity. The People\u2019s Liberation Army threatens and challenges\u00a0Taiwan\u2019s military and coast guard on a daily basis. Taiwan responds professionally and does not flinch. It does not ask American forces to fight every skirmish on its behalf.<\/p>\n

Taiwan’s defense spending has increased every year this decade and currently stands at over 3 percent of GDP. Taiwan\u2019s president, Lai Ching-te, has committed\u00a0to reaching 5 percent of GDP by 2030, a target that would make Taiwan one of the highest defense-spending democracies relative to the size of its economy.<\/p>\n

Critically, Taiwan is spending this money on American weapons designed specifically for the threat it faces. Harpoon coastal defense missiles. HIMARS rocket artillery. Javelin anti-tank missiles. These are not platforms purchased for parades. They are the ones that American military planners have identified\u00a0as most relevant to deterring a PLA amphibious assault.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s diplomats have been explicit\u00a0in the run-up to this week\u2019s summit that they want Trump to bend on Taiwan. They say it is \u201cat the core of China\u2019s core interests\u201d and Washington\u2019s adherence to the One China principle is a \u201cprerequisite\u201d for stable relations. Xi is likely to offer trade deals and rare earth cooperation, if Trump will constrain arms sales or acknowledge that the United States opposes Taiwan\u2019s independence. Xi will calibrate his appeal to a president who thinks transactionally.<\/p>\n

President Trump should recognize that Taiwan is offering the far better deal. It has already done what Washington would want from an ally.\u201d It is a democracy. It is spending over 3 percent of GDP on defense and committed to 5 percent. It is buying American weapons specifically designed for its threat environment. It is standing daily against a U.S. peer adversary. And it is the source of the semiconductor chips that energize American economic and military power in the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n

Trading Taiwan\u2019s security for rhetoric from Beijing would be a strategic blunder of historic proportions, one that every American ally watching the summit, from Tokyo and Seoul to Warsaw and Tallin would remember for a generation.<\/p>\n

Mark Montgomery is a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral who is now a Senior Director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n