Donald Trump claims “nothing’s changed” on U.S. policy toward Taiwan. But the U.S. president’s stunning remarks about support for the democratic island — and what they portend following his high-profile summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping — belie a shifting reality on the ground.
In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Trump questioned whether it made sense for U.S. forces to “travel 9,500 miles to fight a war” and said he considered a pending $14 billion American arms sales package to Taiwan as leverage in his dealings with Xi, calling it “a very good negotiating chip.”
Although not a formal shift in U.S. declaratory policy toward Taiwan — as some observers had feared he might do at the summit with Xi — Trump also broke with precedent by openly warning the government in Taipei against any push for formal independence,?
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