Following his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, President Trump demonstrated his penchant for a transactional foreign policy when he remarked that arms sales to Taiwan constitute a useful “bargaining chip” in America’s dealings with Beijing.
That comment did not go down well inside the Beltway, to put it mildly. But Trump’s habit of straying from the customary script, at least in this case, is wholly justified.
The controversy began when a Fox News interviewer in Beijing asked Trump whether he was ready to approve a major arms sales package for Taiwan this year. Trump replied, “No, I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China… It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly.”
Trump then went further, repeating his gripe that Taiwan “stole” the U.S. semiconductor industry and castigating Taiwan’s leaders as “dangerous separatists who are trying to drag the United States into a bruising war.”
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