A few days ago, Trump successfully defeated his biggest rival DeSantis in the Republican primary election in Iowa, and won the support of DeSantis.
However, it is worth mentioning that after Trump announced his victory over DeSantis, he was interviewed by the American media Fox News. The most noteworthy issue in this interview is not the Republican party's election issue, but Trump's statement on Taiwan.
In an interview, Trump said in response to the Taiwan issue that Taiwan has stolen the chip semiconductor business of the United States, and we used to manufacture chips in the United States, but now we manufacture them in Taiwan, so the United States should raise taxes on Taiwan. At the same time, as recently as last September, Trump said that "the United States should not protect Taiwan if China attacks Taiwan by force", and he also emphasized that only stupid people would do this.
Trump
Regarding Trump's rhetoric on Taiwan, his supporters believe that Trump has followed the usual U.S. policy of "strategic ambiguity" on Taiwan, because Trump refuses to make substantive commitments on the issue, which is completely different from the Biden administration. But at the same time, there is also a view that it is still not clear why the Biden administration has made the Taiwan issue a confrontation between China and the United States, because the United States has recognized this island as part of China.
Opponents, however, have slammed Mr. Trump's views. U.S. policy expert Thanofsky said in a commentary article that Trump has repeatedly accused the Biden administration of taking a series of weak measures on China, but in fact gave the green light to China's reunification with Taiwan. Trump's promise that the United States will not retaliate against China's military reunification measures after being elected is not in the national interest of the United States. Because with the Taiwan region being taken by China, it will make up for the relatively backward shortcomings of China's chip manufacturing, and the United States will also be under greater pressure from China in the high-tech field.
In fact, Trump's statement on the Taiwan issue is a true expression of the United States' attitude and policy toward Taiwan, but the United States does not want to admit it and does not dare to admit it.
For example, a week after Lai Ching-te was elected, the US "New York Times" said that as China asserts its sovereignty over the Taiwan region with greater force, Taiwan's doubts about the trustworthiness of the United States are deepening.
According to the latest poll on US-Taiwan relations on the island, although many people on the island still support the United States to continue to sell weapons and equipment to Taiwan, they also believe that the Biden administration will send troops to Taiwan at a critical moment. Overall, however, Taiwanese people's trust in the U.S. government has declined significantly, with only 34 percent believing the U.S. to be trustworthy today, compared with 45 percent three years ago.
This means that more and more people on the island are beginning to suspect that Taiwan will be abandoned by the United States, after all, the United States has too many records in this regard, such as the Afghan government in the past two years, and now the Taiwanese people naturally have reason to worry that the United States will choose to abandon them.
The New York Times believes that the impact of this suspicion on the United States will be fatal, because if the island loses confidence in the US Taiwan policy, it will likely lead to a change in the cross-strait policy on the island from "resisting reunification by force" to "peaceful reunification." Once the two sides of the strait get closer, China will also have more powerful forces and strength to break through the U.S. island chain strategy and the Indo-Pacific strategic blockade, and the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy will also go bankrupt.
On this issue, the Biden administration has actually been trying its best to maintain the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, and even did not hesitate to publicly say that it would send troops to "defend Taiwan" at a critical moment, which was once considered that the US government had broken the "strategic ambiguity" policy on the Taiwan issue, but in fact, every time Biden made a similar statement, the White House would stand up and reiterate that the United States' one-China policy had not changed, and pull back what Biden said. In the final analysis, the US policy toward Taiwan has not changed, but it only hopes to cheer up the "Taiwan independence" forces on the island by shouting and making them have the illusion that "the United States will protect Taiwan," so as to maintain US influence on Taiwan.
At present, after Trump won the Republican nomination, he continued to lead in the approval rating, and it is very likely that he will defeat his rival Biden and regain the presidency of the United States. And he has more uncertainty than Biden, of course, Trump, as a businessman, likes to measure things by interests, obviously "defending Taiwan" will put the United States in crisis, and the result of the military push is that the US military cannot defeat the PLA, so it is obvious that the loss of the deal, Trump will naturally not choose. And what is concerning is that Trump believes that Taiwan has robbed the business of American chips, which also means that if he comes to power, Taiwan's semiconductor industry will be more difficult.