Can the US and Taiwan advance a shared vision?

These are times of testing for the people of Taiwan. They confront simultaneous challenges domestically, with China, and with their most important international partner, the United States. If ever there was a moment that called for Washington and Taipei to open new avenues of mutually beneficial cooperation and support, this would be it.

China’s strategy of “coercion without violence”

Since former Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s election in 2016, Beijing has been pursuing an unrelenting campaign of what my Brookings colleague Richard Bush calls “coercion without violence.” Beijing is working to wear down the confidence of the people of Taiwan in their own future. Beijing uses tactics short of violence to steadily induce a sense of fatalism among Taiwan people that resistance is futile, and that Taiwan eventually will have no choice but to succumb to Beijing’s designs. These tactics include persistent visible military pressure, economic inducements and penalties, diplomatic pressure, covert operations, organized crime, cyber operations, and disinformation.

At her first inauguration, Tsai made a serious effort to assure the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) leadership that she was committed to maintaining the status quo. She pledged in her 2016 inaugural address to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and expressed openness to cross-Strait dialogue. She affirmed she would handle cross-Strait affairs according to the Republic of China Constitution and the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area. This, in effect, meant she would adhere to existing legal frameworks around there being one China and would not pursue formal independence for Taiwan. Tsai also acknowledged the historical fact of interactions between empowered entities from Taiwan and China in 1992 and the spirit of seeking common ground while accepting differences. She also called for both sides of the Taiwan Strait to coexist peacefully.

Beijing treated Tsai like a teacher scolding a student, describing her message as an “incomplete test paper” because she did not explicitly recognize the “1992 Consensus.” Thus, rather than accepting thinly veiled ambiguity, Beijing chose to reject outright anything short of acceptance of its demands. Beijing then pivoted toward its campaign of “coercion without violence,” a campaign that has continued uninterrupted ever since.

Tsai was—and is—a highly adaptive thinker. She is globally aware of the impacts of her words and actions. She is thoughtful and methodical, a trade negotiator by training, who measures twice and cuts once.

Enter President Lai Ching-te

When Lai Ching-te succeeded Tsai as president in 2024, he had no illusion that progress is possible in lowering cross-Strait tensions or restoring direct cross-Strait dialogue. As Tsai’s premier and later vice president, Lai saw firsthand the efforts Tsai made to try to manage cross-Strait tensions and Beijing’s unwillingness to reciprocate. Regardless of what Tsai said or did, Beijing applied more pressure and greater efforts to isolate Taiwan on the world stage. Lai’s governance record largely reflects his expectation that Beijing will use a one-way ratchet to increase pressure on Taiwan so long as he is president, regardless of what he says or does.

Rather than attempting to play nice with Beijing, Lai instead has focused on shoring up Taiwan’s vulnerabilities, including by strengthening efforts to curb China’s ability to influence politics and public opinion in Taiwan. Such efforts have contributed to rising political heat inside Taiwan, where the main opposition parties control a narrow majority in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan. Taiwan’s competing political parties have long pursued efforts to tilt the rules of the political game to their own advantage. As part of this pattern, over the past year, the Legislative Yuan adopted laws to expand the legislature’s powers to balance the president. When Taiwan’s constitutional court ruled parts of the laws unconstitutional, the legislature passed another law that paralyzed Lai’s ability to confirm enough constitutional court justices to meet the quorum for reaching verdicts.

Taiwan’s political system is in turmoil. Lai’s approval ratings have dropped. So, too, has public sentiment on Taiwan’s future. As The Economist recently reported, “More than 80% of Taiwanese want to keep the ‘status quo’, but only about 20% think that is possible in the long run, according to Wu Jieh-min of Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s top research institution. Only about 4% of Taiwanese support unification. But asked what they expect to happen rather than what they prefer, about 30% say Taiwan will end up ‘being unified by mainland China’, 8% more than in 2020.”

For Beijing, these results represent a return on investment for its strategy of “coercion without violence.” Beijing would far prefer for the people of Taiwan to conclude that their futures would be enhanced by union with China than use force to impose its will on the people of Taiwan. So long as Taiwan’s main political parties are consumed by internal fighting, they will lack the unity to confront Taiwan’s principal policy problem, the China challenge.

“America skepticism” on the rise

Beijing’s psychological campaign to wear down the will of the people of Taiwan is being aided by growing perceptions in Taiwan of American unreliability. Sixty percent of people in Taiwan think America is not trustworthy under President Donald Trump, according to the Taiwan Public Opinion Foundation.

Whereas in the past, there was implicit confidence that Taiwan and the United States were bound by shared values, that is no longer the case under Trump. The Taiwan people also have diminished confidence that the United States would come to the defense of friends under attack, particularly following Trump’s blaming of Ukraine for Russia’s illegal invasion. Trump’s announcement of 32% tariffs on Taiwan imports reinforced in Taiwan Trump’s unsentimental and transactional approach to the relationship. There are also lingering anxieties in Taiwan’s policy community that Trump could use Taiwan as a pawn in any future negotiations with Chinese President Xi Jinping. When Washington’s policy approach to Taiwan is riddled with personalized agendas and internal contradictions, America’s own interests suffer, to say nothing of Taiwan’s.

In other words, America’s image is fairly battered in Taiwan now. Now is not an opportune moment for American leaders to jawbone or publicly dictate to Taiwan’s leaders what they must or must not do. Such calls likely would not go heeded, but they would engender lasting resentments that would diminish American influence over time.

A shared U.S.-Taiwan agenda

Instead, if Washington wishes to preserve a dynamic equilibrium in the Taiwan Strait in the face of China’s unrelenting pressure, it must find effective ways to counterbalance PRC efforts to tilt the status quo in its preferred direction. Given Trump’s ambivalence about ideological arguments and his lack of conviction about defending security partners, any efforts to bolster confidence in Taiwan about its own future must be practical to be persuasive. To be credible, such signals must be grounded in America’s self-interest, rather than high-minded appeals to values or ideology.

There are practical arguments for strengthening U.S.-Taiwan ties, namely that both sides offer what the other side needs. Taiwan is short in energy, land, and talent. America has abundance where Taiwan faces scarcity. In other fields, Taiwan is ahead while America lags.

For example, America has the energy capacity to sustain Taiwan’s economic growth and support its energy security. From geothermal to nuclear, liquefied natural gas, and advanced grid technologies, America is resource-rich. Taiwan is not. As Taiwan builds cutting-edge fabs, data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) servers, and advanced manufacturing hubs, it will have growing energy demands that America can help meet. America is also the world’s largest market and leading base of research for many advanced technologies. This includes weapons systems Taiwan will need to produce indigenously at scale to bolster its own defense.

Conversely, America’s vision for reindustrialization does not work without Taiwan. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company’s $165 billion in pledged investment in the United States will serve as a massive catalyst for developing high-tech production ecosystems in America. These ecosystems will pull in other leading actors in semiconductors and other advanced manufacturing value chains, helping rebuild capacity to produce critical technologies. Without these inputs, Trump’s odds of achieving progress on his vision of reindustrializing the United States would be significantly diminished.

Consistent communication at authoritative levels is an enabler of mutually beneficial cooperation. By working together, both sides will bind their fortunes more closely and accelerate the development of new technological breakthroughs. Some may worry about the risk that Taiwan could be hollowed out by such investments. Given the hockey-stick-shaped demand for advanced microchips to fuel the global AI revolution, though, I remain confident that Taiwan’s role as the world’s epicenter for chip production will be undiminished.

Conclusion

The combination of Taiwan’s domestic political divisions and perceptions of American unreliability is creating fertile ground for China to advance its long-term efforts to erode public confidence in Taiwan about its future. In the face of this challenge, now is not the time for America to browbeat Taiwan to follow its instructions. If the Trump administration is going to jawbone anyone about cross-Strait stability, it should be China. China’s steady escalation of coercive actions over the past near decade has raised cross-Strait risks far more than any words Lai or Tsai have chosen. As the adage goes, actions speak louder than words.

In the face of this challenge, now is the moment for Washington and Taipei to pursue common efforts for shared benefit. As the AI revolution accelerates, the United States and Taiwan can help each other meet the moment. They should seize this opportunity and not let it pass them by.