Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
FORMER US PRESIDENT Donald Trump recently called on Taiwan to increase military spending to 10% of its GDP.
The comment comes out of left field, particularly seeing as while there have been calls from US military experts for Taiwan to increase the percentage of its GDP on military expenditures, this is usually in the range of 5%.
The call for Taiwan to spend 5% of its GDP on military expenditures is sometimes based on the fact that this is the amount Israel spends. Taiwan has defended itself sometimes with that the amount of its GDP spent on defense is comparable to that of NATO countries.
Trump’s comments have led to criticisms even from advocates of increasing military spending in Taiwan, seeing as Taiwan would need to gradually raise the amount it spends on the military. Indeed, a sudden increase to 10% would probably not do much for Taiwan’s defense, except result in sudden overspending on existing projects and a vast amount of unaccountable funds.
To this extent, the proposal is politically untenable at a time that the KMT has taken at the idea of spending more on the military budget as provocative of China. Apart from that the KMT is likely to target flashy big-ticket items, such as Taiwan’s domestic submarine program, the idea of any sort of increase in the military budget is likely to see pushback.
The KMT has increasingly dug its heels into framing the Lai administration as unnecessarily provoking China through actions to shore up Taiwan’s defenses. More broadly, the KMT has taken a scorched-earth approach to Lai’s governance. As such, this has led the KMT to block the national budget repeatedly in the current legislative session.
Former US president Donald Trump. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
Many in Taiwan originally saw Trump as an ally after the 2016 Trump-Tsai phone call, in which Trump broke diplomatic precedent by taking a phone call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen congratulating him on his election victory. But Trump has acquired a reputation for unreliability in the years since, as observed in a number of comments suggesting that Taiwan should further pay the US for its defense, when Taiwan already pays the US for arms deals, and reports on comments comparing Taiwan to the size of a pen and China to the size of the Resolute desk used in the Oval Office, suggesting that Taiwan is unimportant for the US relative to China.
But Trump’s comments are likely to be used as ammunition by the KMT, in framing the US as an uncredible and unreliable ally. The KMT has increasingly leaned into US-skeptic narratives, framing the US as foisting unwanted, even dangerous arms onto Taiwan in order to profit from arms sales, while also suggesting that the US would be unlikely to back Taiwan in the event of war, and would not become directly involved, as it has in the course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Indeed, perceptions of the reliability of the US in wartime are deeply linked to perceptions of the war in Ukraine. The Lai administration has emphasized to the US that it prefers to see staunch support of Ukraine, presumably because of the fact that tepid support for Ukraine, or a decline in support–as called for by MAGA Republicans among Trump’s diehard supporters–would lead to declining faith in the reliability of the US.
But in the event of a second Trump presidency, Trump’s comments may indicate that he would further push the US-Taiwan relationship toward extractive ends, again, in line with previous statements calling on Taiwan to pay for its defense. Comments by possible appointees to his administration, such as Elbridge Colby, have not helped. Colby in the past suggested bombing TSMC to keep it out of Chinese hands, prompting consternation in Taiwan, and has otherwise suggested that the US should take less interest in Taiwan based on how little Taiwan does for its own defense–though Colby has faced accusations that he simply aims to use this as a pretext to justify isolationist aims.
Trump’s comments add to the uncertainty about what would occur for Taiwan in the event of a second Trump presidency. This is to be seen.