The US approved $11 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, rankling Beijing even as the White House softens its approach to China in other arenas.
The weapons include missiles, drones, and artillery systems, Bloomberg wrote, marking one of Washington’s “most significant efforts in recent years” to support Taiwan’s deterrence of China, which views the island as a renegade province. Beijing said Washington was “turning Taiwan into a powder keg.”
Even though US President Donald Trump is expanding the Overton window on China — viewing it less as an adversary than a peer — he would “still face enormous pressure” to respond to Beijing’s quarantine or blockade of Taiwan, lest US allies depict him as weak, an International Crisis Group expert argued.
