Brandon J. Weichert
The United States’ loss in its trade war with China should be a dire warning to Taiwan that the Americans are rethinking their commitments.
A strange thing has happened. President Donald Trump appears to have stood down in the trade war he initiated with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Why? Unfortunately, it appears to have been because the Americans were losing.
Recently, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made the comment that China is either entering a massive recession or a major depression—and Xi Jinping is trying to take the whole world economy down with them. That very well may be true. Irrespective of this, the fact remains that China has the Americans right where they want them on trade.
Donald Trump’s Trade War Was Folly
By playing their ace in the hole—China’s overwhelming dominance in the global rare earth mineral market, Beijing has effectively cut the Americans off at the knees when it comes to escalating the trade war. Already, China has extracted serious concessions from Washington in the form of Trump’s recent authorization allowing for NVIDIA to sell advanced computer chips to Chinese tech firms—though Trump continues to deny China access to NVIDIA’s most cutting-edge chips.
It gets better for Beijing, though. Recently, the Trump administration opted to deny Taiwan a previously negotiated $400 million weapons deal. These weapons would be crucial for any defense of the embattled island. It is no secret that the Trump White House nixed this deal as part of its larger attempt to end the trade war with the Chinese. Yet the Chinese are not budging on their intransigent position on rare earths.
There remains a real chance that Trump will get some semblance of a deal with China. But America’s inauspicious showing in the trade war—which apparently came as a shock to the White House—is a wakeup call for what the future portends in terms of US-China relations. And it certainly doesn’t bode well for Taiwan, which now finds itself as little more than a sacrificial lamb in the trade war between Beijing and Washington.
The United States Might Not Be Willing to Defend Taiwan
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