Taiwan arms sale timeline unclear as US$14 billion package awaits Trump approval

Scrutiny over US arms sales to Taiwan has increased following the September Trump-Xi summit, with a proposed US$14 billion package still awaiting US President Donald Trump's final approval. Taiwanese experts say progress could depend on the US midterm elections or a de-escalation in the US-Iran conflict. 

Arms sales to Taiwan

David Perdue, the US ambassador to China, said in an appearance on Fox News Sunday after the September Trump-Xi meeting that Trump had asked Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) whether China was interested in purchasing US weapons.

According to The New York Times, the White House and the US State Department denied Perdue’s account, saying there were no plans to sell weapons to China.

When questioned by reporters on Sept. 28, Trump also denied Perdue’s characterization, suggesting instead that the ambassador may have been referring to Taiwan.

In late 2025, the Trump administration announced a record US$11.1 billion weapons package for Taiwan, the largest US arms package for Taiwan in history. However, a separate proposed US$14 billion package has yet to receive Trump's approval.

House Speaker Mike Johnson pushed back on Sept. 28 against suggestions that the Taiwan deal is linked to negotiations with Beijing, telling Fox Business he "wouldn't read too much into that." 

Across two terms, Johnson added, Trump will have completed about US$40 billion in weapons sales to Taiwan, roughly twice the volume under Barack Obama.

Ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio downplayed political motives behind delays in foreign military sales, saying weapons transfers must first be weighed against US combatant commanders' baseline operational needs.

“This is not about Taiwan in specific, but when we sell something, that means we don’t have it anymore,” Rubio said, pointing to constraints on US stockpiles and defense industrial capacity.

Taiwan’s response

Defense Minister Koo Li-hsiung (顧立雄) said on Sept. 29 that Taiwan had received repeated assurances from the United States following the Trump-Xi meeting that US policy toward Taiwan had not changed.

Koo said that Taiwan remains in close contact with Washington and has received no word of changes to any pending arms sales. 

Asked if the package could be greenlit before year's end, he said Taipei will continue coordinating with the US side.

Taiwan is also awaiting the arrival of its first two newly acquired F-16V Block 70 fighter jets, which arrived in Hawaii but have not yet flown to Taiwan.

Koo said the fighters are ready for delivery as Taiwan continues preparations to bring them into service alongside the US program office, adding that the ministry will announce a ferry schedule once finalized.

Expert assessments

Huang Kwei-bo (黃奎博), a professor in National Chengchi University’s Department of Diplomacy, told TCN that while Beijing likely reiterated its opposition to US arms sales during the Trump-Xi summit, Chinese political pressure is a persistent baseline rather than a new hurdle.

Beyond Beijing's objections, Huang pointed to bottlenecks within the US defense industrial base as a critical headwind for Taiwan arms sales. 

Given these compounding constraints, he said Washington is highly unlikely to deliver Taipei's requested equipment in a single, all-in-one package in the near term.

Ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator Chen Kuan-ting (陳冠廷), a member of the Legislative Yuan's Foreign and National Defense Committee, offered a different view, telling TCN that the Trump-Xi summit should not be directly linked to progress on arms sales.

Chen noted that House Speaker Mike Johnson had explicitly cautioned against overinterpreting the timeline of the arms package. Instead, Chen pointed to the escalating Iran conflict and heavy Middle Eastern demand for missiles and ammunition as the primary drivers competing with Taiwan’s weapons requirements. 

Wang Hung-jen (王宏仁), a political science professor at National Cheng Kung University, expressed a similar view.

Summit readouts from both capitals suggest arms sales to Taipei were not a primary point of contention during the talks, Wang said. 

Instead, Wang said, the dialogue emphasized strengthening bilateral military communications. Key channels had been suspended following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 Taiwan visit, but the two countries agreed to resume them in November 2023. 

Rather than Beijing’s political pressure alone, Wang said the key bottleneck slowing arms sales is the strain the Middle East conflict has placed on US defense manufacturing and weapons demand. 

The pending US$14 billion package reportedly includes significant quantities of air-defense systems — the exact munitions Washington is currently scrambling to produce and replenish for its own forces, Wang added.

How quickly the US defense industry can expand output and allocate capacity among military theaters and foreign arms-sale commitments will directly affect when Taiwan receives the weapons it has ordered, Wang said.

Key timing

Huang said that if Washington cannot provide Taiwan’s requested systems in a single package in the short term, it may instead break the proposal into separate, smaller arms-sale announcements. 

He noted the approach could become clearer after the US midterm elections.

If Washington rolls out new arms packages shortly after the Trump-Xi summit, Huang said, a sharp backlash from Beijing could drag the issue directly into US domestic politics. Consequently, he said, the Trump administration may tread carefully on Taiwan arms approvals until after the upcoming midterm elections.

Wang, meanwhile, noted that developments in the US-Iran war could be more decisive.

If the conflict gradually eases, he said, pressure on US arms sales and weapons deliveries to Taiwan could decline, allowing pending projects to move forward, potentially in separate batches.