US position on Taiwan remains unchanged, but Trump can turn on a dime

For the most part, Donald Trump's visit to China was a bit of a nothingburger, despite Trump's usual bombastic and delusional reporting. No big deals, and very few small deals.

Of course, Taiwan had to come up at some point in the visit, and, of course, President Xi urged Trump not to support Taiwan, which China claims as part of its own territory. Trump, for his part, blathered something about "not looking for somebody to go independent", which might or might not be a veiled and confusing warning to Taiwan not to declare its independence, which is has already done for decades. He did say that "if you kept it the way it is, I think China's going to be OK with that", which is also absolutely not true.

Trump added that "nothing's changed" with respect to the USA's policy on Taiwan, which amounts to not formally supporting Taiwanese independence, while stopping short of explicitly opposing independence, a kind of sensible on-the-fence position, given the circumstances.

Of course, the first thing Taiwan did after Trump's visit was to publicly re-declare their independence: Taiwan "is a sovereign and independent democratic nation and is not subordinate to the People's Republic of China", read an unequivocal foreign ministry statement. Taiwan's Presidential Office reminded the world of "the multiple reaffirmations from the US side, including from President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that the consistent US policy toward Taiwan remain unchanged".

This, of course, puts the US in an awkward position, especially as President Xi was at pains to remind Trump that any misstep on the issue could cause "conflict". 

But Taiwan too needs to tread carefully. The United States is legally required to provide weapons to Taiwan for its defence (stipulated in the Taiwan Relations Act), and an $11.1 billion arms package was announced by Washington just this last December. But a second phase of arms sales, worth around $15 billion, has not yet been approved by the US, and Taiwan must know that Trump would be more than willing to use that as a bargaining chip in his relations with China (in fact, he admitted as much, in so many words). Taiwan might think that that deal is done, dusted and non-negotiable, but Trump almost certainly does not.