by Brian Hioe

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

RECENT COMMENTS by US President-elect Donald Trump have called for the US to annex Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. Trump has also suggested renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” With Trump set to take office today, this already shows the instability that is potentially ahead for Taiwan with a second Trump presidency.

Such comments have prompted not only mockery but also some alarm. For one, such calls for annexing key features of other countries are reflective of Trump’s America First worldview, in that such countries are no geopolitical threat to the US. However, Trump still seems to feel a sense of threat from smaller countries in the vicinity of the US that, in fact, operate within the framework of the US-led international order and so lashes out at them accordingly.

If Trump’s comments have any more serious tenor, it may be that Trump hopes to bolster US global power through control of the Panama Canal, and hopes for the natural resources that Greenland possesses. In this sense, Trump’s comments stand at odds with the view that Trump and the MAGA Republicans who back him are isolationists, who are opposed to “Globalists” who see American power as best served through its extension internationally and hope to see America withdraw into its own borders.

Some views are that Trump’s comments were merely to distract and in this sense should not be taken seriously.  Trump’s comments, however, have been interpreted as a blow to American prestige abroad nonetheless.

As such, these comments should be a matter of concern for Taiwan. If America now speaks of annexing its neighbors, perhaps with the maximization of its geopolitical interests in mind, this worldview would seem to justify China’s own claims over Taiwan. So much for any talk of like-minded democracies standing in solidarity with each other.

Indeed, the contradictions of Trump are many, least of which are his odd friendships with the leaders of geopolitical powers at odds with America such as Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, and Kim Jong-un. Trump often alternates between hostility with such individuals and odd overtures of friendship, as with his invite to Xi Jinping to attend his presidential inauguration.

Even if Trump has staffed his second presidential administration with largely the same China hawks that were present in his first administration, he may still unpredictably flip-flop on China. The quick reversal of the TikTok ban through executive order by Trump is one example.

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

More generally, it may be that Trump is best viewed not as an isolationist, but as having a multipolar worldview, in which the US, China, and Russia, have their own separate spheres of influence in which they are justified in taking any course of action against the countries within. But the dangers of this worldview are many for Taiwan, in that it would be easy for China to assert that Taiwan lies in its sphere of influence, and so China is justified in deciding arbitrarily on Taiwan’s fate.

To this extent, Trump seems hardly conscious that America’s neighbors are not only not threatening to America in any way, but are deeply economically linked to it. This may prove dangerous for Taiwan, which Trump has already lashed out on several occasions with claims that Taiwan “stole” the US semiconductor industry.

In truth, the Taiwanese semiconductor manufacturing interests serve to bolster American global economic power, but Trump may lash out at it nonetheless. It proves further dangerous for Taiwan that the Trump administration will include officials such as Elbridge Colby, who previously sparked consternation in Taiwan over calls to bomb semiconductor manufacturing giant TSMC in order to prevent it from falling into Chinese hands. Even if bombing TSMC would be an act of war, Colby did not back down from such comments, and this worldview may also extend to Trump’s willingness to embrace sudden hostility toward allies.

Either way, the Trump administration is likely to turn up pressure on Taiwan, as also evidenced in the occasions in which Trump has lashed out at Taiwan as freeloading off of US munificence. Trump is likely to continue to call on Taiwan to increase its defense budget, even as the national budget–including key provisions for defense–has been currently taken hostage by the KMT.

Moreover, with Trump having promised grand solutions to the conflict in Ukraine–which may not consult Ukraine’s views in any way–Taiwan must also be cautious of Trump seeking to make a grand deal with Xi over Taiwan. Taiwan may find provisions for its defense arbitrarily traded off by Trump in the interests of what he thinks is a good deal–at least for America, but which could perhaps serve to trade away Taiwan’s political freedoms, or key provisions for its defense.

Dangerous times may be ahead for Taiwan, then, with Trump’s comments giving a taste of what may be to come in his second political administration. Taiwanese government officials have mostly sought to emphasize that while they do not take all statements by Trump literally, they do take him seriously.

Again, with some exceptions as Colby, the Trump administration’s appointments were seen as reassuring, in that they largely consisted of individuals hawkish on China during the first Trump administration. But the aging US president is, if anything, highly unpredictable, as is his base. In this sense, it is hard to know which direction his policy will lurch in next. And such unpredictable policies are bound to present opportunities that can and will be exploited by the Chinese government.

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