Geostrategic Media Political Commentary, Analysis, Security, Defense
Tamara Berro
When Chinese President Xi Jinping met Donald Trump in May, Taiwan was at the centre of the most difficult question in the relationship between the world’s two largest powers. Xi described the island as the most important and sensitive issue in Sino-American relations. He also warned that mishandling it could undermine stability in the Taiwan Strait and push the two countries towards a more dangerous confrontation.
Four months later, little had changed in Beijing’s position. China continued to describe Taiwan as a red line and urged Washington to handle the issue with the utmost caution. Xi called on Trump to oppose Taiwanese independence. For Beijing, Taiwan is not simply another item on a crowded diplomatic agenda. It is tied to sovereignty, territorial integrity and national reunification.
For Washington, however, Taiwan is also an instrument of strategy.
That tension has become particularly visible over American arms sales to the island. Trump has indicated that a proposed package for Taiwan could be considered in the context of wider negotiations with China, describing arms sales as a potentially useful bargaining instrument.
That is where the central contradiction lies.
What Washington may regard as leverage, Beijing regards as a matter of sovereignty.
The distinction is important because it determines whether Taiwan can become part of the transactional diplomacy that Trump has increasingly brought to the US-China relationship—or whether it remains one of the issues that neither side can comfortably trade away.
The bargain behind the weapons
It is tempting to regard an American decision to delay or approve weapons for Taiwan as a discrete military question. It is not.
The decision sits within a much larger negotiation involving trade, technology, rare-earth minerals, energy, artificial intelligence and China’s wider role in international crises.
Trump has repeatedly demonstrated a preference for treating seemingly separate issues as components of a single negotiation. That creates the possibility that Washington could use one form of leverage to extract concessions in another area.
In theory, American weapons for Taiwan could therefore be connected to Chinese cooperation elsewhere: on Iran, the Strait of Hormuz, energy purchases, rare-earth exports, trade or other matters.
But there is an important distinction between a plausible negotiating framework and evidence of an actual bargain.
There is no public evidence that Washington and Beijing have reached a direct quid pro quo in which weapons for Taiwan are being exchanged for Chinese concessions on another issue. The more defensible interpretation is that the Taiwan arms question has become part of a wider bargaining environment in which both governments are testing the value of their respective forms of leverage.
That distinction matters.
Diplomacy often operates through ambiguity. Governments may deliberately leave several issues connected without formally linking them. This gives negotiators room to manoeuvre while avoiding commitments that could become politically or strategically binding.
What China can—and cannot—trade
Beijing may be willing to negotiate over American arms sales without being willing to negotiate over Taiwan itself.
That is a crucial difference.
China’s position on sovereignty over Taiwan is deeply entrenched. Beijing has consistently opposed Taiwanese independence and American military support for the island. But the quantity, timing and nature of American arms transfers are more tangible negotiating questions.
A Chinese government might therefore decide that making a limited concession on a particular weapons package is less costly than making concessions on issues such as Iran, trade or critical technologies.
Such flexibility would not necessarily represent a change in China’s position on Taiwan.
It would instead represent a calculation about the price of managing the wider relationship with Washington.
This is precisely why the weapons issue could become useful to both sides.
For Trump, arms sales provide leverage.
For Xi, the possibility of moderating that leverage provides something that can potentially be exchanged for another American concession.
But there is a danger in allowing such a mechanism to become routine.
The danger of precedent
If American arms sales to Taiwan become a regular bargaining instrument with China, Washington could gradually create a negotiating mechanism that can be reused in every future crisis.
A weapons package could be delayed in exchange for a Chinese concession. Another package could later be reopened. A third could become leverage in a dispute over trade or technology.
Over time, the process would change the character of the Taiwan issue.
The danger for Beijing would not necessarily be one particular arms package. It would be the creation of a precedent in which American military support for Taiwan becomes permanently embedded in the transactional relationship between Washington and Beijing.
China would therefore have an incentive to prevent a temporary bargaining arrangement from becoming a permanent negotiating framework.
There is another complication: American administrations change.
A formula negotiated with Trump could be abandoned by his successor. A future president could decide that Taiwan’s security requires a different approach and revive or expand arms sales regardless of understandings reached with Beijing.
Any Chinese concession based on the expectation of long-term American restraint would therefore carry its own risks.
China’s counter-leverage
Nor does Washington have a monopoly on bargaining power.
China has instruments of its own, particularly in critical minerals and strategic materials that feed important American industrial and technological sectors.
This creates a potentially uncomfortable symmetry.
Washington can use Taiwan’s security relationship as leverage.
Beijing can use its position in strategic supply chains as leverage.
The result is a relationship in which military, economic and technological competition are increasingly intertwined.
Rare earths are no longer simply an industrial issue. Taiwan is no longer simply a military issue. Artificial intelligence is no longer simply a technology issue.
Each has become part of a larger contest over strategic dependence.
That makes the US-China relationship harder to compartmentalise and potentially harder to stabilise.
Washington has domestic constraints, too
Trump’s calculations are also shaped by American domestic politics.
There is support in Congress for strengthening Taiwan’s defence capabilities, particularly among lawmakers who regard China’s military expansion as a long-term strategic challenge. Other voices are likely to be wary of allowing Taiwan’s security relationship to become a bargaining chip in broader negotiations with Beijing.
The issue is also connected to American economic and technological interests.
Taiwan’s importance to the global semiconductor industry gives the island significance well beyond its geographical size. Investment in semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence and advanced technology has made Taiwan an increasingly important component of America’s economic-security strategy.
Washington must therefore balance several objectives at once: deterring military coercion, preserving economic ties, maintaining technological advantages and avoiding a confrontation with China that neither side intends to fight.
That is a difficult equation.
A test of strategic ambiguity
Taiwan has long occupied an unusual position in American foreign policy.
Washington recognises Beijing diplomatically while maintaining substantial unofficial relations with Taipei. It has also pursued a policy of strategic ambiguity over precisely how the United States would respond to a Chinese attack.
The arms-sales debate adds another layer of ambiguity.
If weapons to Taiwan can be used as leverage in negotiations with Beijing, the meaning of American security support becomes less predictable. If, by contrast, Washington insists that military support for Taiwan cannot be traded for concessions elsewhere, it establishes a different boundary around the relationship.
Neither approach is without costs.
The first risks making Taiwan appear transactional.
The second reduces one of Washington’s potential negotiating tools.
For Beijing, the choice is equally uncomfortable. Treating every arms package as an existential confrontation could make compromise impossible. Accepting American arms sales as a normal bargaining variable could allow Taiwan to become a permanent source of leverage.
That is the dilemma.
The island in the middle
The real significance of the Taiwan arms debate therefore lies beyond the weapons themselves.
It is a test of whether Washington and Beijing can compartmentalise their rivalry—or whether every major issue will eventually become connected to every other issue.
If Taiwan becomes part of a regular system of reciprocal bargaining, the island could gradually become embedded in a wider marketplace of concessions: trade for security, minerals for technology, energy for arms, or cooperation on one geopolitical crisis for restraint on another.
That might make diplomacy more flexible.
It could also make it more fragile.
For Taiwan itself, the implications are especially consequential. A security relationship is fundamentally different from a bargaining relationship. Taipei may welcome greater American military support, but it would have an obvious interest in knowing whether that support is determined primarily by American assessments of Taiwan’s security or by the outcome of negotiations between Washington and Beijing.
This is why the question facing Trump is larger than whether to approve or delay a particular arms package.
It is whether Taiwan should become part of the transactional architecture of US-China diplomacy.
And the question facing Xi is equally fundamental: can Beijing prevent Taiwan from becoming a recurring American bargaining instrument without making compromise with Washington impossible?
For now, the answer remains uncertain.
But the distinction between a red line and a bargaining chip is becoming increasingly important.
If Taiwan remains beyond the reach of direct trade-offs, it will continue to represent one of the limits of US-China transactional diplomacy.
If American arms sales become routinely exchangeable for Chinese concessions, Taiwan will have entered a different strategic category altogether.
The outcome will say much about the future of the US-China relationship.
More importantly, it will reveal whether Washington and Beijing are capable of negotiating around their deepest disagreement—or whether, when the stakes become high enough, almost everything can be put on the table.
Tamara Berro is a lebanese writer
