Taiwan thanks US as Xi presses Trump to halt arms sales — SkimNews
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- Taiwan's government thanked the US on Sept 24 for its "long-standing support" and said it was maintaining close contact with Washington ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, with Cabinet spokesperson Michelle Lee calling US backing "firm and clear."
- China reiterated on Sept 23 that Taiwan is a "red line" it will not allow the US to cross, and Xi Jinping is expected to press Trump during the Washington summit to halt US arms sales to Taiwan entirely.
- Trump approved an $11 billion arms package for Taiwan in December — the largest ever — but a second package worth roughly $14 billion has been held up for months since a May summit in Beijing, where Trump called it "a very good negotiating chip."
- Secretary of State Marco Rubio framed the arms delay as a logistics constraint, telling reporters in New York that once the US sells weapons, "we don't have it anymore," signaling the administration views stockpiles as a global allocation problem rather than a purely political one.
- Xi arrived in Washington on Sept 23 ahead of the Sept 24 summit, making Taiwan the highest-stakes bilateral flashpoint even as trade, AI, and rare-earths issues fill the broader agenda.
Why it matters: Taiwan has now been publicly cast by Trump himself as a bargaining chip: the largest-ever approved $11B package is in motion but the follow-on $14B is frozen pending Xi's ask. For Taipei, the risk is that Washington trades away Taiwan's military readiness for concessions on trade or rare earths; the immediate consequence is continued uncertainty over weapons deliveries at a moment when Xi has explicitly named Taiwan as a non-negotiable red line.
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