Trump Asked Xi if China Would Like to Buy American Weapons
The American ambassador in Beijing said the president justified a pending arms sale to Taiwan by casting it as one of many, then offered Beijing the same. “President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world,” David Perdue said. “He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point.” Taipei has waited months for a $14bn package to be approved.
Selling weapons to the country the weapons are meant to deter would overturn generations of American policy and put American technology in front of a potential adversary, which is presumably why the ambassador moved quickly to insist the president “is as strong on Taiwan as I’ve ever seen anybody”. The package was frozen after the two leaders met in Beijing in May, a meeting after which the president described arms sales to Taiwan as a “very good negotiating chip” with China — language that reads differently now. At the White House last week Mr Xi pressed him to oppose Taiwanese independence outright rather than merely decline to support it, according to Chinese state media. American law obliges Washington to give Taiwan the means to defend itself, while leaving deliberately unsaid whether it would fight. Watch whether the package moves at all.