Here’s How Trump’s Meeting With Xi Could Spark A Crisis Over Taiwan

President Donald Trump has teased his upcoming summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping as “potentially historic.” If the U.S. president doesn’t choose his words carefully, he could make history by overturning decades of delicate diplomacy over Taiwan.

U.S. allies are particularly worried that Trump — known for sweeping, off-the-cuff statements — could end up disavowing U.S. support for Taiwan, perhaps even inadvertently, according to conversations with five diplomats from Asian and European countries.

“It will be a great success for Xi to make Trump say something good for China in public like ‘I support peaceful unification’ or ‘I oppose the independence of Taiwan,’ or ‘Taiwan is a part of China,” one Asian diplomat said. “Trump is Trump — off script all the time. Let’s pray nothing disastrous happens.”

The diplomat, like others, was granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue.

U.S. policy on Taiwan has long been to acknowledge it as distinct from the People’s Republic of China, which claims the island as its territory, while avoiding voicing any support for Taiwan independence. Beijing has warned such a move could trigger war. Even slight variances in wording could signal a change in policy. Diplomats and China experts warn Xi might push Trump to adjustU.S. policy language from “we do not support Taiwan independence,” to a more definitive “we oppose Taiwan independence.”

“This is pretty subtle stuff — it sounds like tomato-tomahto, even though it has big strategic ramifications,” said Jonathan Czin, a former China analyst at the CIA, now at the Brookings Institution. The risk is that “Trump doesn’t operate with that level of precision,” Czin added.

A person close to the White House said those around Trump are encouraging the president to consider the importance of how he speaks about Taiwan in his conversations with Xi, with the goal of keeping the U.S. policy toward Taiwan unchanged.

“Trump, you never know with him, he’s very unpredictable. So all of his advisers, and all of the materials, and all of the briefings and discussions are to leave the status quo in place in Taiwan and minimize discussion of it,” the individual said.

Those who are working to make sure Trump treads carefully on Taiwan are worried that he may not have enough personally invested to stick to the script, the person said.

“The thing about selling out Taiwan in terms of Trump is there’s really no consequence for him. He's not going to run again. He doesn't have this ideological concern about the future of democracy,” the person explained. “He looks at things only in practical economic terms.”

One of diplomats’ major worries: that Trump will trade away years of careful Taiwan policy in exchange for trade deals or help on Iran.

“We’re concerned that Beijing may offer to broker a deal with Iran that would re-open the Hormuz Strait in exchange for U.S. concessions on Taiwan,” a second Washington-based Asian diplomat said in an interview.

The administration hasn’t divulged any specific details about the summit agenda. The two leaders “will discuss a variety of topics including trade, fentanyl, Iran, and other matters of importance to the American people,” the White House said in a statement last week.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested last week that any mention of Taiwan during the meeting would likely be limited to a restatement of existing U.S. and Chinese postures toward the island.

“I’m sure Taiwan will be a topic of conversation, as it always is,” Rubio told reporters. “The Chinese understand our position on that topic, we understand theirs.”

The White House said in a statement that “there has been no change in U.S. policy regarding Taiwan,” but declined to comment on how Trump plans to approach discussions over the island.

Alex Gray, who served in a senior role at the National Security Council in Trump's first term, rejected the idea that Trump might be swayed by Xi to shift on Taiwan.

“Look, I don't think this is going to be a strategic conversation. I think this is going to be a primarily economic conversation. The think tank class in Washington has been predicting the president will abandon Taiwan for over a decade now,” Gray said. “Not only does he not do that, but he's strengthened Taiwan more than any president since 1979 … I see nothing but positive indicators of a strengthened relationship with Taiwan.”

Even if Taiwan doesn’t become a live issue in the talks, the fears of other countries in the region highlight the damage Trump has inflicted on perceptions of American reliability by upending established norms. Trump’s willingness to shred traditional alliances through threats to annex Greenland, make Canada the 51st state and reduce U.S. troop numbers in Germany has eroded international confidence in his willingness to honor longstanding U.S. commitments. That includes commitments aimed at deterring possible Chinese aggression against Taiwan.

Taipei is so anxious about how Trump could address its future in the meeting with Xi that it has said it hopes it doesn’t come up as a topic at all.

Taiwan doesn’t want to land “on the menu of the talk between Xi Jinping and President Trump,” Deputy Foreign Minister Francois Wu said in aninterview with Bloomberg News last month. “We worry, and we need to avoid that.”

Taiwan’s diplomatic outpost in Washington declined to comment on Wu’s statement or any concerns Taipei has about the Trump-Xi summit.

Some U.S. lawmakers are trying to insulate Taiwan from potential summit horsetrading. Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) introduced a resolution last month urging the administration to “maintain the longstanding United States policy on Taiwan.” Coons declined to comment on any specific Taiwan-related outreach to the White House, and Ricketts didn’t respond to a request for further comment.

Beijing is hinting it wants Taiwan on the meeting agenda.

In a pre-summit preparatory call last month, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Rubio that Taiwan is “the greatest risk factor in China-U.S. relations,” per a Chinese Foreign Ministry readout.

That’s consistent with messaging Chinese officials have shared with American China experts over the past year.

“More and more there's a view in Beijing like, ‘We might as well try a Hail Mary on Taiwan. It probably won't work, but there's no real downside,’” said Zack Cooper, the former assistant to the deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism from 2007 to 2008 who regularly meets with Chinese officials.

It wouldn’t be the first time Beijing uses a leader summit to press the Taiwan issue. Xi also asked President Joe Biden to change the language the U.S. uses on Taiwan independencewhen they met in 2024. Biden refused.

The Chinese Embassy declined to comment on whether Xi will press Trump to backpedal on U.S. support for Taiwan.

If the U.S. were to explicitly oppose Taiwan independence, it could open the door for China to declare currently routine U.S.-Taiwan engagement — including lawmaker contacts with Taiwanese officials and U.S. arms sales to the island — as support for Taiwan independence.

Trump already raised questions about his adherence to U.S. commitments to Taiwan in February when he told reporters that he and Xi had discussed potential additional weapons sales to Taiwan in a call. That suggested Trump had violated one of the commitments that the administration of President Ronald Reagan made to Taiwan in 1982 — known asthe Six Assurances — that the U.S. wouldn’t consult with Beijing on weapon sales to the island.

Backtracking on Taiwan ties could come with costs for the U.S. The Trump administration made arecord $11 billion arms sale to Taiwan in December. The administration has also approved an additional $14 billion in weapon sales, the Taipei Timesreported in March, citing Defense Minister Wellington Koo.

The White House declined to comment on Koo’s assertion.

Taiwan is also a key component of administration efforts to create a secure supply chain for the U.S. high technology sector. The administrationfinalized a trade deal with Taiwan in January that will funnel up to $500 billion in Taiwanese direct investment and credit guarantees into the U.S. semiconductor and artificial intelligence sectors.

Still, if Trump makes a broad statement that appears to change U.S.-Taiwan ties, it may not result in actual policy change. Aides to then-President Biden scrambled to walk back his assertions on four separate occasions that the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily in the event of Chinese aggression against Taiwan (a violation of the “strategic ambiguity” policy aimed to keep Beijing guessing as to how the U.S. would react in such a scenario).

Trump’s aides — or even Trump himself on the way home on Air Force One — could do a similar message reversal if Trump makes unscripted remarks in Beijing that suggest he’s changing the U.S. relationship with Taiwan.

“The Chinese would love him to say something that differs from existing policy, but depending on how dramatic that something is, they know that it would probably be ephemeral,” said Mark Lambert, former deputy assistant secretary of State for China and Taiwan in the Biden administration.