Trump is lukewarm on defending Taiwan, and also wants to unban TikTok. And Elon Musk who just made a huge deal with China in April wrt Tesla, just endorsed now Trump and donated heavily to his campaign at $45 million.
Is Trump possibly being controlled by the CCP? Or am I reading too much into it?
Asked about America’s commitment to defending Taiwan from China which views the Asian democracy as a breakaway province, Trump makes it clear that despite recent bipartisan support for Taiwan, he’s at best lukewarm about standing up to Chinese aggression. Part of his skepticism is grounded in economic resentment. “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he says. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy.” What he wants is for Taiwan to pay the US for protection. “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?” he asks. Another factor driving his skepticism is what he regards as the practical difficulty of defending a small island on the other side of the globe. “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away,” he says. “It’s 68 miles away from China.” Abandoning the commitment to Taiwan would represent a dramatic shift in US foreign policy, as significant as halting support for Ukraine. But Trump sounds ready to radically alter the terms of these relationships.
But at the same time has a history of opposition towards interventionalism. It’s one thing to talk a big game but will he back it up if push comes to shove?
I never believed Trump had any intentions of being tough on China in the first place. He was cornered into it when Xi thought he was in a position to bargain and wouldn’t play ball, failing to understand Trump needs his face more than Pooh Bear does.
Trump is a bidness man. He has no ideology or foreign policy agenda aside from brokering the best deal for America. That is the extent of his thinking.
No, he is not a Russian/Chinese/globalist/Mole People asset.
I believe he had some kind of deal with Putin, and only liked Xi by proxy during his first term, until his trade deals with China failed to go through and COVID happened. However, things seem different now that he has been out of office. The one thing that did not change is his lack of willingness to come to Taiwan’s defense.
I’m just thinking Trump is a business man. If the CCP made a deal with Elon and just happened to earmark some extra funds and say to him, well maybe you should use to donate to Trump’s campaign with this if he rubs our back, and then Elon goes to this with Trump, I could see him accepting that deal. It is $45 mil a month so around $250 million US until November, not exactly chump change. You’d imagine there are some strings attached somewhere to that, right? No one’s offering me a quarter of a billion dollars to just do what I was already doing before, simply because I’m such a virtuous guy, you know?
Bolton, who has always been friendly to Taiwan, also says that after President Trump found out that Wall Street financiers made a fortune in China, Trump stated that he is particularly dyspeptic about Taiwan. Furthermore, it appears that on several occasions, Trump pointed at the tip of his pen and said “This is Taiwan,” and then pointed at the Oval Office desk and said “This is China.” Bolton writes, “That pretty much sums up the promises and obligations that the United States has for its democratic allies.”
The issue with that is primarily one of destroying strategic ambiguity. Were it NATO, for example, I think most would agree it’d be better if most of Europe and other member states paid their share.
The whole perk of strategic ambiguity is it does keep tensions down between China and the USA. This leads to flashes, sure, where China tests it’s limits a bit and the USA gets a bit to cozy for Chinese comfort with Taiwan, but doesn’t put the relationship into an (even more than now) directly adversarial state.
If you accept that Ukraine was in part - be that small or large - caused by NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, you can surely see the threat that an American defense treaty towards Taiwan would pose to Chinese regional hegemony. What we do now calls their bluff, but doesn’t come at a loss of… Face, shall we say.
I think the current system is certainly flawed, and I will admit - I’m rather afraid that Trump doesn’t really understand why Taiwan is valuable to the USA and the Democratic world, and will not bother with it’s defense should the time come. He’s known to be critical of post WW2 alliances and of Americans fighting in foreign wars. I’d say the latter of these is generally positive and probably, in my opinion, the best thing trump offered (even if he did rule during a geopolitically quieter era due in part to COVID and economic winds). This part of him does specifically worry me wrt Taiwan.
There’s no reason to think he’s been compromised by the Chinese. He doesn’t care about America, if he did he’d pay taxes and wouldn’t call dead soldiers losers. He doesn’t even care about his family, he’s a felon because he tried to hide from the American people the raw dogging of a porn star while his wife was pregnant.
He cares about himself.
Is a famously unsuccessful businessman who doesn’t like to pay his bills or otherwise stand by anything, susceptible to flattery, bribery, threats, or a fear of dragging the US into a shooting war with China? I’d say the chances are better than 0, and higher with him than any other candidate this year.
Is it possible that other governments, including Taiwan, can manipulate him into standing up to China? Absolutely.
