by Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
IN THE WAKE of the victory of Donald Trump in the US presidential election, debates have broken out in Taiwan about how to ensure the strength of US-Taiwan ties.
Most suggestions have been that Taiwan should increase the amount of money that it spends on defense in order to placate the US. Taiwan currently spends 2.5% of its GDP on defense, which is comparable to members of NATO.
Nevertheless, it has been a longstanding refrain of the US to call on Taiwan to increase the percentage of its GDP that it spends on defense. Suggestions from US analysts have often been that Taiwan should increase its GDP spending to 5%. This number seems to be derived from the fact that Israel spends 5% of its GDP on defense.
Trump, however, has suggested that Taiwan should increase defense spending to 10%. This appears to be an arbitrary number suggested by Trump.
When Trump called for such increases in the past, advocates of civil defense and other efforts to prove Taiwan’s resilience in the face of invasion were largely opposed. This occurred even as such individuals may otherwise advocate increasing Taiwan’s defense budget.
The criticism was largely that increases in Taiwan’s defense budget should be gradual, rather than occurring in such a sudden manner. If so, this would likely lead to a number of redundant forms of spending, in which defense spending was not directed toward useful ends.
Donald Trump. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0
Otherwise, Trump has suggested that Taiwan should pay the US for its defense. Ironically, Taiwan already does, seeing as Taiwan spends billions each year on arms deals with the US.
Trump’s record of frequent flip-flops and inaccurate statements, then, suggests that Trump does not actually have any specific amount in mind for Taiwan in terms of defense spending to satisfy him. And broadly speaking, based on past precedent, it is expected that Trump will demand an extractive relationship from allies of the US in the Asia Pacific such as Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines, as observed in past statements by Trump that such countries should pay the US for defense.
Trump may be more placated by arms purchase deals with large optics, then, which serve to convey that Taiwan buys from the US and that the US is financially benefiting from its defense relationship with Taiwan. This would be with the aim of countering the perception that Taiwan freeloading off of Taiwan.
But, importantly, Trump seems inattentive to the argument that the US benefits from its defensive relationship with Taiwan by projecting power into the Asia Pacific and, in this way, countering China. For the most part, Trump seems narrowly focused on US financial benefit from the US-Taiwan defense relationship. And while some have suggested that Taiwan could simply give Trump what he wants, Trump is likely to change his stances unpredictably.
Indeed, it also proves a question for Taiwan as to how to placate Trump when he has lashed out against Taiwan with the accusation that it stole the US semiconductor industry. This is not true and what Trump may not grasp is that the US is still the force in the world that holds the IPs that Taiwanese semiconductor fabs manufacture.
Trump has often framed his America First vision for a restoration of US economic dominance through bringing manufacturing back to the US, though this would ignore that the US originally outsourced manufacturing to other parts of the world because it no longer wished to take on “3D”—“dirty, demeaning, and dangerous” jobs in manufacturing.
Manufacturing is not likely to return to the US, seeing as that America has scaled up the value chain. But Trump may be convinced by the optics of manufacturing returning to the US. As such, Trump is likely to be receptive to semiconductor fabs being built in the US, such as with TSMC’s Arizona plant.
Even so, it will prove challenging to increase the military budget when the Taiwanese legislature is KMT-controlled. At present, the KMT has sought to block the national budget, inclusive of the defense budget, so as to impede the DPP. And the KMT has taken aim at TSMC’s Arizona fab, claiming that this is the Tsai administration giving away Taiwan’s trade secrets to the US for little in return. One can expect reverberations from the US presidential elections in domestic politics, then.