by Brian Hioe

語言:
English
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

THERE WAS MUCH discussion about the implications for Taiwan in the wake of the first US presidential debate, which took place late last month between Joe Biden of the Democratic Party and Donald Trump of the Republican Party. Biden is the current US president, while Trump is the former president, but Trump is running for reelection.

In particular, while Biden stuck to policy points during the debate, his age was highly visible. Indeed, Biden is 81 years old, making him the oldest US president in history. Trump himself is not much younger, at age 78. Indeed, at one point, Trump and Biden began to argue about their age, with both claiming to be better golfers than the other.

In the wake of the debate, calls grew for Biden to drop out of the race, with the view that his vice president Kamala Harris would be a more viable candidate for the Democratic Party. A failed assassination attempt on Trump is perceived as potentially boosting Trump’s electoral chances, in allowing him to play the victim.

The fallout from the debate as well as other incidents, including one occasion in which Biden publicly referred to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian president Vladimir Putin has now led Biden to withdraw in favor of his vice president, Kamala Harris. This only took place after weeks in which the Biden administration denied that Biden had any intention of backing out of the race and seems to have only occurred after significant pressure from other major figures of the Democratic Party.

Yet it may be useful to review the way that Taiwan features in US politics at present. Although Taiwan was, perhaps thankfully, not mentioned during the presidential debate, it proved further surprising in the days after the debate when Taiwan was not mentioned in the Republican Party’s official platform for the first time in four decades. This raised questions about whether the Republican Party continues to see Taiwan as a core issue.

But following comments to Bloomberg in an interview with Trump published on July 16th, there has been a great deal of concern about the implications for Taiwan of a second Trump presidency. In the interview, Trump claimed that Taiwan had stolen the semiconductor industry from the US and called on Taiwan to pay the US for its defense.

The US is Taiwan’s longstanding security guarantor from the threat of China. However, Taiwan pays for the arms that it regularly purchases from the US.

Former US president Donald Trump. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

Taiwan has seen strengthened relations with the US under both presidential administrations, with tensions between the US and China sharply rising under the Trump administration. The Biden administration largely continued the Trump administration’s stances when it came to China, in terms of tech and economic competition between the two superpowers.

In some ways, the Biden administration took advantage of what had been done previously by the Trump administration. That being said, the Biden administration did not reverse course on actions such as the US withdrawal from the TPP either, noting well the rise of protectionism in the US as evidenced in a significant share of Trump’s support base.

Taiwan initially viewed the Trump administration in a positive light, particularly after Trump proved willing to take a phone call as president-elect from Tsai Ing-wen. However, in the years since then, Taiwan has increasingly become aware of Trump’s unpredictable flip-flops, such as an incident in which Trump compared Taiwan to the size of a pen and China to the size of the desk used in the Oval Office. Taiwan was slow to come to this realization about Trump, however, originally failing to distinguish between Trump’s MAGA Republicans and traditional Republicans antagonistic to China on traditional anti-Communist grounds.

After taking office, Biden himself has seemed to flip-flop on Taiwan on several occasions. This mostly took place through statements by Biden suggesting a US commitment to defend Taiwan that were quickly walked back by the White House. Yet as the overall pattern of Biden’s comments seemed to be consistent support of Taiwan and his administration was not full of the unpredictable characters that were present in the Trump administration, the Biden administration came to be seen as more of a steady hand than the Trump administration–even if Taiwan has historically trusted Republicans more than Democrats, who are seen as soft on China.

With Trump’s MAGA Republicans intent on cutting aid to Ukraine, even as they talk of decreasing support for Ukraine and increasing support for Taiwan, the Tsai and Lai administrations have preferred continued support for Ukraine from the US. This is with the awareness that domestic skepticism of the reliability of the US is on the rise in Taiwan and there will be further skepticism of the US as an ally against China if it is seen as abandoning Ukraine. Trump’s perceived unreliability, too, has been a major contributor to US-skeptic discourse in Taiwan.

Still, Trump’s comments to Bloomberg are similar to comments he previously made about Japan during his first term. Yet then-Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe largely managed to keep Trump from abandoning security ties with Japan by cozying up with him, to flatter Trump’s ego. It may not be surprising if Lai attempts the same. By contrast, it is less clear how Taiwan intends to conduct relations with the Democratic Party as it switches candidates.

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