President Trump said Monday that he did not discuss an offer to sell U.S. weapons to China during his summit last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Mr. Trump was asked about comments made Sunday by U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue, in which Mr. Perdue said the president had asked Mr. Xi during their talks whether he would like to buy U.S. arms.
“I’ve never heard of that one. I’m going to have to ask him,” Mr. Trump said of the ambassador’s comment.
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The president made his remarks during an Oval Office meeting announcing a new steel plant in Iowa.
“Now, they would probably like to buy it because we do make better equipment than them, so maybe it’s a good idea. But we didn’t discuss that,” he said.
Mr. Trump said he believed Mr. Perdue was referring to U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, a point of contention with members of Congress, as the Trump administration is delaying approval of a $14 billion arms package that Congress approved in January.
The ambassador’s comments prompted the State Department to issue a denial that American weapons sales to China were offered or allowed.
“U.S. law prohibits arms sales to China, and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China,” a State Department official said.
The U.S. agreed to allow sales of select weapons to China in 1981, including two dozen Black Hawk military helicopters in 1985, equipment and technology for modernizing Chinese factories that produce 155 mm artillery shells and advanced electronic systems, airborne radar and navigation systems for Chinese F-8 fighters in 1986.
All sales were halted after China’s use of military forces to attack unarmed pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Congress codified the arms ban into law in 1990.
Taiwan, the independent island democracy claimed by Beijing, remains a stumbling block in the new detente between the United States and China.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi began working through new diplomatic initiatives between the two countries with a face-to-face meeting in South Korea in October and have since met twice more — once in Beijing and most recently in Washington last week.
The White House statement on the summit made no mention of Taiwan, but China’s readout did.
The Foreign Ministry’s official statement on the summit said Mr. Xi made clear that Beijing sees Taiwan as central to “national reunification and territorial integrity.”
“It is hoped that the U.S. side will adhere to the correct position of opposing ’Taiwan independence,’ and handle the Taiwan question with caution, so as to lay a solid foundation for China-U.S. strategic cooperation and the development of bilateral relations,” the Foreign Ministry statement said in a veiled suggestion that future arms sales to the island state could derail warming ties.
A White House spokeswoman did not immediately respond when asked for Mr. Trump’s reaction to the Chinese leader’s statements on Taiwan at the summit.
Mr. Perdue denied that the slowdown in weapons deliveries to Taiwan was part of an effort to appease Mr. Xi.
“Well, earlier, President Trump’s already approved $11 billion. There are continuing conversations about other sales,” he said.
The two presidents discuss Taiwan arms sales “every time they get together,” Mr. Perdue said.
“But President Trump continues to say, ’Hey, we sell arms to other people around the world.’ He actually asked President Xi would he like to buy some at one point. But our support for that has not changed. We don’t support independence, and we don’t support coercion,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Mr. Perdue said it is “absolutely not the case” that the arms packages are being held because of appeasement.
“I can tell you I’ve been in every one of these conversations. President Trump is as strong on Taiwan as I’ve ever seen anybody. He’s made it very clear that we have not changed the ’One China’ policy,” he said.
Trump administration policy continues to support Taiwan under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the three joint U.S.-China communiques and the Six Assurances to Taiwan.
“President Xi has heard that repeatedly from President Donald Trump,” said Mr. Perdue, claiming the president has sold 50% more arms to Taiwan than any other president since 1979.
The administration approved an $11 billion arms package to Taiwan in December.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday that the delay in the $14 billion arms package was the result of internal reviews to determine whether U.S. arms stockpiles needed for deterrence in various military theaters would remain at required levels.
“This is not about Taiwan in specific, but when we sell something, that means we don’t have it anymore,” he said in New York on Wednesday. “We can get it in the future, but we don’t have it now.”
The delayed arms package includes air-defense missiles, including Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile interceptors and advanced surface-to-air missile systems.
The U.S. military is facing a shortage of anti-missile interceptors as a result of large-scale use during the Iran war, according to analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Military forces fired as many as 1,571 Patriot interceptors from a stockpile of 2,330 during the Iran war. Up to 220 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors were fired from a stockpile of 452 in the conflict.
Hundreds of Navy SM-3 and SM-6 interceptors were also used. Mr. Trump has said that in targeting the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln, Iran fired more than 100 antiship missiles, all of which were repulsed.
Shortages of Patriot, THAAD, SM-3 and SM-6 missiles have prompted the Pentagon to ramp up production of defensive and offensive missiles, including Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles.
Four Republican senators, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, chairman of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, wrote to Mr. Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asking why the $14 billion package had not passed, as well as two other funding programs for Taiwan that remained unfulfilled.
“We are concerned by President Trump’s description of Taiwan as ’a very good negotiating chip’ in engagements with Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party,” the letter states. “It is difficult to imagine how the United States might credibly project influence in the Indo-Pacific if the price of keeping up diplomatic appearances is denying our partners key deterrent capabilities.”
The president said in May after his summit with Mr. Xi in Beijing that the $14 billion arms deal was a “very good negotiating chip for us, frankly.”
“It’s a lot of weapons,” he told Fox News.
The senators also raised concerns in their letter about why the administration had not moved forward with $300 million in military financing for Taiwan and a $1 billion program approved last year, called the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative.
In May, Mr. Trump said he would decide about moving forward on the latest arms package, but also said, “You know, I think the last thing we need right now is a war that’s 9,500 miles away.”
Former State Department official and director of the Future Asia Project at the International Assessment and Strategy Center John Tkacik, an expert on Taiwan affairs, said selling out Taiwan to Beijing would be the fastest way for the Chinese to gain artificial intelligence supremacy.
Because Taiwan is the world’s most important supplier of AI semiconductors and graphic processing units, AI chip developer Nvidia could not function without Taiwan, nor could any of the other U.S. AI tech giants, he said.
“President Trump knows all this, and his administration has been very forward-moving in support of Taiwan, so his public ambivalence on Taiwan is baffling,” Mr. Tkacik said.
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