Trump declines to commit to Taiwan's defense if China invades

Washington, Feb. 26 (CNA) United States President Donald Trump on Wednesday again refused to make clear his stance on protecting Taiwan from a takeover by China during his presidency.

Asked by a reporter during a Cabinet meeting whether it was his policy that China would never take Taiwan by force while he is president, Trump declined to give a definitive answer.

"I never comment on that," he said. "I don't comment on it because I don't want to ever put myself in that position."

Trump also reiterated that he has a "great relationship" with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and said that Washington welcomes good relations with Beijing.

"I see so many things saying that we don't want China in this country," Trump said. "That's not right. We want them to invest in the United States. That's good. There's a lot of money coming in, and we'll invest in China. We'll do things with China. The relationship we'll have with China would be a very good one."

While the U.S. wants a good relationship with China, he said, "they won't be able to take advantage of us as what they did to [former President Joe] Biden."

Before Trump was inaugurated, he said in an interview on NBC last December that he would "never say" if the U.S. was committed to defending Taiwan against China.

Then President-elect Trump said he had a "very good relationship" with Xi and would "prefer" if China did not attempt to invade Taiwan.

At the time, Trump said he would "have to negotiate things" before committing to the U.S.' defense of Taiwan in case of an invasion.

During the U.S. presidential election campaign last year, Trump said that Taiwan "stole our chip business" and needed to "pay us for defense."

He has also floated the idea of Taiwan increasing its defense spending to 10 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP).

Trump's stance on the cross-strait issue is a departure from that of his predecessor Biden, who had said unequivocally on several occasions that he would commit U.S. troops in the event of a conflict in the Taiwan Strait.

Meanwhile, during an interview on Fox News on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said his country's cross-strait policy had not changed.

"We have a longstanding position on Taiwan that we're not going to abandon, and that is: We are against any forced, compelled, coercive change in the status of Taiwan," he said.

"That's been our position since the late 1970s, and that continues to be our position, and that's not going to change," he reiterated, when asked whether the U.S. would defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion.

Rubio said he hoped, however, that an invasion of Taiwan by China does not happen.

"The best way to prevent that from happening is to have the capability -- a strong leader in the White House, which we have, President Trump -- and the capability, military capability, to respond," Rubio said.

Over the past few decades, the U.S. has maintained a stance characterized as "strategic ambiguity," which means not showing its hand on how it would respond in the event of a cross-strait conflict.

After Biden took office as president in January 2021, however, he repeatedly used language that appeared to diverge from that longstanding ambiguity, saying directly that the U.S. would come to Taiwan's defense in the event of a war.

On each of those occasions, administration officials later walked back Biden's comments to some extent, signaling that the U.S.' policy on Taiwan had not changed.