ANALYSIS/Taiwan needs to be ready if Trump re-elected: Scholars

Taipei, Nov. 2 (CNA) Foreign affairs and defense experts believe United States-China ties will remain confrontational no matter who wins the U.S. presidential election, but they said Taiwan would need to be better prepared if Donald Trump were to return to the White House.

At a seminar in Taipei earlier this week organized by National Chengchi University's (NCCU) Institute of International Relations, four scholars said the U.S.' overall tougher stance against Beijing in recent years would likely remain regardless of who becomes president.

The relatively unpredictability of a Trump presidency, however, compared to the likely continuity of the Joe Biden administration's policies if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, meant a Trump victory would put more pressure on Taiwan, they argued.

If Trump were to return to the White House, Taiwan would need to take a closer look at his new national security team members and policies, and be ready for the potential impact, said Liu Fu-kuo (劉復國), an adjunct research fellow at the institute and director of the Taipei-based think tank Taiwan Center for Security Studies.

One foreseeable consequence for Taiwan could be on its world-leading semiconductor industry, including the world's largest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), Liu said.

TSMC's future under Trump

On the campaign trail, Trump accused Taiwan of "stealing" the chip industry from the U.S. decades ago. He has also repeatedly criticized the imbalance in the economic relationship, claiming that Taiwan took away the U.S.' semiconductor business.

Whether TSMC continues to expand its American presence is expected to be influenced heavily by a Trump government, Liu contended.

Another major impact on Taipei is whether it would be forced to pay more for American support of Taiwan's defense, he said.

During the campaign, Trump has repeatedly questioned the U.S.-Taiwan relationship and expressed frustration that Taipei was not paying the U.S. to fund its defense, even though Taiwan has orders outstanding for US$19 billion of U.S. weapons systems.

Echoing Liu's views, two other experts at NCCU's Institute of International Relations also said that confrontation between the U.S. and China will likely remain whether Harris or Trump is elected.

Harris and Trump will likely take different approaches to America's ongoing trade war with China, however, research fellow Chen Te-sheng (陳德昇) and assistant research fellow Tzeng Wei-feng (曾偉峯) argued.

Trump would likely take a more drastic approach, including by significantly raising tariffs on all Chinese products, while Harris and the Democrats would be more "precise," targeting high-tech Chinese products only before going after other goods, they both said.

The former head of NCCU's Institute of International Relations, Kou Chien-wen (寇健文), said the strained U.S.-China relations would also affect U.S. relations with its traditional allies in the region.

Trump is known for his unpredictability not only to his enemies but also to his friends, Kou said, adding that if he returns to the White House, it would put extra pressure politically and economically on U.S. allies in the region, including Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Tzeng also said "if Trump wins, Taiwan needs to pay more attention to the U.S. than to China."

The NCCU scholars' predictions were consistent with that made by a former top American diplomat to Taiwan last month.

Stephen Young, former American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Taipei director, said at a seminar in Taipei on Oct. 14 that the U.S. Congress has long been supportive of Taiwan and "this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future."

"No matter who wins the presidential elections this fall, the Congress will insist on broad continuity in our Asian policy," Young said at the time. "That will include continuing arms sales to Taiwan and projecting a tough stance toward any efforts by Beijing to threaten or attack this island."

While Trump would be "less predictable" than Harris if re-elected, the former president "would still face significant opposition to any substantive shift away from Taipei," according to the former U.S. envoy to Taiwan.

"The American Congress, across party lines, has long supported moral and material support for Taipei and its democratic system, and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future," he said.

U.S.-Sino military dialogue

Meanwhile, on the security front, National Defense University professor Ma Cheng-kun (馬振坤) said that one area worth watching was how a new U.S. president would handle U.S.-Sino security communications that have kept the Indo-Pacific region relatively stable over the past months.

The Biden administration has been working to restore communications between the Chinese and American militaries since Biden's meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping (習近平) on the sidelines of the APEC summit in California last November.

China suspended high-level communication between the two militaries after then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August 2022.

Senior officials from both countries have reconnected at several high-level meetings in recent months.

The resumption of two-way communications is beneficial for peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea, Ma noted.

He also warned, however, that the People's Liberation Army (PLA) has repeatedly tested the U.S.' red line on Taiwan, including by holding two military exercises around the island in May and in October and conducted other gray-zone harassment.

The U.S. and Taiwan need to be prepared if PLA takes further action to test the U.S. following the November election and before a new American president takes office in January 2025, he said.

U.S. 'strategic ambiguity' on Taiwan

Tzeng, meanwhile, said the new American leader was likely to return to Washington's long-held "strategic ambiguity" regarding whether it would come to Taiwan's defense in the event of an attack by China.

Over the past few decades, the U.S. has intentionally maintained a stance characterized as "strategic ambiguity" by not revealing its hand on how it would respond to such an attack.

Since taking office in January 2021, however, Biden has repeatedly used language that appeared to diverge from this longstanding policy, saying directly that the U.S. would come to Taiwan's defense.

On most of those occasions, administration officials later walked back the comments and signaled that America's Taiwan policy had not changed.

"I don't believe either of them [Harris and Trump] would take a clearer stance on the issue than Biden," Tzeng said.