Trump And Taiwan: A Big, Beautiful Relationship Or The Deal Maker’s Ultimate Bargaining Chip?

>> Kharis Templeman: Thanks everyone for coming. It's great to see such a good turnout today and to our online audience as well, wherever you may be, welcome. I am Kharis Templeman. I'm a research fellow here at the Hoover Institution and it's my privilege to manage the project on Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region here at the Institution.

Today I get to introduce our, I think well known and renowned speaker Randall Schriver. He's going to be speaking about Trump and Taiwan. And the title of his talk is A Big Beautiful Relationship or the Deal Maker's Ultimate Bargaining Chip?. And so we're going to unpack that a little bit today in his remarks and in our conversation and then we'll open it up to the floor as well after we're done.

After Randy is done speaking. I did have some introductory remarks here. Briefly, I first want to make an announcement. We're going to have another event in this room on Taiwan energy and AI issues that will be this Thursday, 3:30 to 5:30. So this exact same space, you're all invited to come to that as well.

And I also wanted to preface Randy's talk today by noting that we are in a pretty a time of great uncertainty in the US-Taiwan relationship. We're only a quarter into the first year of Donald Trump's second term in office, but we've also experienced a dizzying pace of activity.

We've seen whole federal agencies shuttered, some long-standing agency core missions have been upended, and we are suddenly in a trade war with apparently every other country in the world with unknown consequences to be determined. Ukraine has been dumped and then courted again. Canada has been threatened with annexation, Greenland and Panama with invasion.

And in the midst of all this chaotic approach to governance, the US's Indo-Pacific strategy remains to be defined. There are some disruptions such as the new tariffs and the suspension of development assistance. But we can also still see signs of continuity and conventional practices, including leader visits, joint statements, and annual military exercises.

But until and unless we get the release of strategic documents such as a national security strategy or a major address by the president or a cabinet official, the overriding feelings in the region are going to continue to be uncertainty and unease with the direction of the new administration in the United States.

And that brings us to Taiwan, there is, in my view, no place in the Indo Pacific with more to gain or to lose in this administration than Taiwan. While Taiwan's representatives have taken proactive steps to earn the right, right in quotes, kind of attention of the new administration, they've announced major investments in the United States, and they've announced increases to Taiwan's defense budget, for instance.

They are still grappling with existential questions right now. Those questions include, are the US And Taiwan on the cusp of forging a closer, stronger relationship with commitments that will endure well beyond this current administration? That would be the dream scenario for Taiwan. Or at the other extreme, is the Trump administration's activity in the region intended to create space for for a grand bargain with China, one that might well include US Concessions on Taiwan's fundamental security and sovereignty concerns?

That is the nightmare scenario for Taiwan. To help us understand which of these scenarios is more likely, we are fortunate to have with us today Randall Schriver. Randy has over three decades of policy work related to Taiwan and the Indo Pacific, as well as significant experience as a senior official in the first Trump administration.

He is currently the chairman of the board of the Project 2049 Institute and a partner at Pacific Solutions, LLC. And in January 2022, he was appointed as a commissioner to the US China Security and Economic Review Commission. He also currently serves the commission as the Vice chairman. I'm happy to say we can also claim him as a part of the Stanford community because he serves as a lecturer for Stanford's Stanford in Washington program.

He's been doing that for actually a number of years. I think over 20 at this point.

>> Randall Schriver: Yeah, 21.

>> Kharis Templeman: 21. And in addition to that work, he's on the board of advisors to the Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA and the board of directors of the US-Taiwan Business Council.

With that introduction, I think I'll just turn it over to you, Randy, and kind of lay out your vision or your view of where you think the Trump administration is headed over the next four years in the Indo Pacific and how it relates to Taiwan.

>> Randall Schriver: Great, thank you Kharis.

Really appreciate the invitation and the hospitality and the wonderful weather. Not only do I have a role with Stanford in Washington, but I did a couple years of allegedly getting a PhD here at Stanford, didn't quite work out. But I can tell you on a day like this, it probably would have been unlikely you'd find me in a lecture hall such as this right now.

So I appreciate everybody sacrificing a good couple of hours of this wonderful weather to participate in this conversation. Yes, a big, beautiful relationship or bargaining chip. Now, to some extent, many of you will understand the pressures of when somebody asks you for a title and a topic and you're still on that day's inbox so you've got to produce something.

But I think it does reflect really the broad spectrum of where things could land in this relationship, depending on how some key decisions go. So I will try to give you an assessment of where I think we are, but I think more importantly the trajectory and where things may go through the course of this administration.

I think it's first thing you have to sort of put it in context of what the administration's priorities are and what their focus is. And certainly a lot of that dominates every news cycle, but to sort of cut through some of that noise and try to describe what they would say their priorities are.

Clearly they're interested in reforming and reshaping the federal government, federal bureaucracy. We've all seen reports of the massive cuts in some of the agencies, I will say, related to Taiwan and China. To the extent any agency has articulated what areas might be insulated or safe, they've always made a point to say work on China.

Competition work in the Indo Pacific will remain the priority area. And I've seen that play out to date, that those are people that have been protected so far, including probationary workers. I won't mention names. I don't want to draw attention to anybody, but this is clearly occupying a lot of the President's attention and the administration's attention.

And if you live in a one industry town, as I do, it's a pretty heavy feel in. Washington right now, it's hard to go to a store or your kids school or a church without running into somebody who's either lost their job or is concerned about losing their job.

So it's a pretty heavy feel. But again, the supposed reforming and right shaping of the federal government, there is an intention to insulate the very important work on competition with China and the Indo-Pacific. There's a clear interest in reshaping America's role in the world when it comes to the global trading system with a stated goal of trying to contribute to reindustrialization of the United States and regaining an aspect of our economic foundation that has been greatly diminished over the last few decades.

And that's primarily found in the tariff policies, but other policies as well. That hits Taiwan directly, of course. 32% tariffs have been announced, which is some calculation of tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade. A little bit of mystery on how some of this is calculated, but that seems to be the number we're working with.

Clearly an interest in border security and work in the Western Hemisphere and a reorientation of the Department of Defense core missions to include border security, which may not seem directly on point related to the Indo-Pacific and Taiwan. But that requires resources and diversion of everything from training to perhaps the train and equip missions being affected.

So there could be second, third-order knock-on effects. But there has been this stated impact intention to keep the Indo-Pacific a priority theater and to keep the China challenge as the pacing challenge. And I think that's quite important, particularly if it's implemented faithfully and upheld in the administration. Now, some of that looks a little different than in previous administrations.

It's, I think, the third administration in a row that has said the Indo-Pacific is the priority theater. Sometimes just saying it doesn't always look like it in actions and when you have stuff happen in the world that requires response and attention. But I think this administration means it not only in the sense of this is really the one challenge that could potentially be existential, or if not existential, extremely impactful on our way of life and our existence.

But that also means tradeoffs and reprioritization perhaps away from other areas. So when this discussion about the US support for NATO, this discussion about US support for even Ukraine to be even more on point here, when particular officials say in this administration, and you wanna draw parallels or inferences what that might mean for Taiwan.

I think one has to be a little bit careful to think that just a decision to maybe have a diminished role in one theater would mean the same for another. And I do think we need to watch carefully to see if what they're actually implementing is a tradeoff in terms of prioritization and reprioritization or if it's something more significant than that.

So that's certainly a space to watch. Now, as you said, Taiwan is really in a precarious position right now, not only because of the uncertainties of the administration's policies, but they're experiencing a great deal of coercion and pressure from China. We just came through another set of very provocative exercises.

I think the numbers I saw over 160 aircraft in and around Taiwan, 40 or so surface vessels, combination of PLA, Navy, Coast Guard, maritime militia. So a very high level of activity in this set of exercises, which I would say is on top of what has become a new normal in terms of regular ops tempo of activity around Taiwan.

It used to be we would get calls in the middle of the night and woken up if there was a flight across the centerline, and what that could mean for the security environment in the Taiwan Strait and the broader Indo-Pacific. Now, it's more than a daily occurrence. There's multiple flights across the centerline a day.

So this is part of the new normal, at least since the Nancy Pelosi, Speaker Pelosi visit of 2022, a very high ops tempo. But that's not the only means of pressure and coercion. China continues to strip diplomatic allies from Taiwan. In the last couple of years, we've seen Solomon Islands, we've seen Nauru switch their diplomatic recognition.

There's isolation that continues in international organizations. And there's rhetoric that at times sounds as though it's being taken to sort of new levels of acute threat, when you look at what was just said about Lai Ching-te being a parasite and the, of course, repeated refusals to announce the use of force.

But really the descriptions, almost the dehumanization of the Taiwanese leaders, the targeting of Taiwanese officials who they claim are pro-independence and subject now to Chinese law, which could mean arrest, could mean extraordinary extradition, could mean anything, according to Chinese law. So high ops tempo, a lot of very stern rhetoric and isolation.

And of course, Taiwan is at the political level not really backing off. In many ways, Lai Ching-te has stood up pretty strongly responding and reacting to the military activity. But even on the political level, Lai has talked about measures that Taiwan has to take in terms of counterespionage, counter-coercion, counter-Chinese influence in Taiwan.

So it is a very sporty situation, let's say, in the Taiwan Strait. Now, again, trying to understand where the Trump administration is now and going forward in the absence of the national security strategy, national defense strategy, the speeches. It's a little bit of reverse engineering of what we're seeing, but I think there's some other things we can point to, and I'll just tick off few.

I do think the first term, we need to look at that record and understand not that the second term 2.0 is going to be a carbon copy, but I think it can inform what our expectations are for the second term. And I think the first term, at the risk of sounding a little self-serving, was fairly strong in terms of investment in the US-Taiwan relationship.

Security assistance, we had more arms sales to Taiwan in the first term of the Trump administration than any previous US administration since the break of relations in 79. That includes administrations that were two terms. So more arms sales to Taiwan in four years than any previous administration, including those that were eight years.

Higher level visits. I personally accompanied Keith Krach when he visited Taiwan as Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs to attend Lee Teng-hui's Memorial. That was the highest level State Department visit we'd had since the break of relations, in many ways mirrored across the agencies. We at DOD began to send our Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense regularly, which is a practice that has continued.

So high level visits, support in international organizations. Counter-isolation, measures not always successful. Remember Vice President Pence called the president of the Solomon Islands and said please, please, don't do this, and do as we say, not as we do. Cuz, of course, we switched our diplomatic relationship in 1979, but But Solomon Islands proceeded with that.

But it did include efforts on the part of the administration to counter that and try to keep Taiwan's diplomatic space. And in many ways, I would say it was a strong record of supporting Taiwan. Not that there weren't perturbations and questions and various anxiety is along the way, but I think in total, a fairly good record.

So I think that's number one thing to look at. Number two, look at the people that have been appointed. And I think I haven't checked the news today, but as far as I know, we still have some very, very strong Asia hands and longtime supporters of US Taiwan relations.

People like Alex Wong at the NSC, Ivan Kanapathy at the NSC, we have Secretary Rubio himself and his counselor, Mike Needham. We have National Security Advisor Waltz. These are all people that I would say are traditionalists when it comes to supporting partners and allies and very strong supporters of Taiwan.

You know, sometimes that can be undone with a single tweet. Sometimes that can change in a news cycle when there's personnel changes. But I think the intentional choices made at the front end of this administration reflect wanting to build a team that's going to be strong in terms of supporting Taiwan.

I think beyond people, beyond, you know, what we can glean from the first term, there are some early signs of how the administration is going to orient on Taiwan. We've seen some early policy statements in the forms of executive orders, some of which not exactly on point, but certainly imply important things for Taiwan.

For example, the executive order on investment security, I think was a very important document that talks about not only strengthening the export controls in some of the areas that are well known to people in this room, advanced semiconductors and related equipment, but also outbound investment in general and what entities and what types of investments they're allowed to support.

You know, for many people, it makes no sense that we're going to, through a CFIUS process, say China cannot invest into a particular US Entity that's doing research in a particular area because it might have military applications. But we're going to allow U.S. capital to invest in a Chinese entity that's doing the exact same research, exact same military applications.

So that eo, among other things, intends to tighten that up. And I think that has positive implications for Taiwan. You know, there were the wording changes on the State Department website, which probably nobody would have noticed had China not complained vociferously. So the State Department removed the line on the website saying we do not support Taiwanese independence, and then there's what the President has said himself.

There was quite a bit of reaction to President Trump's comments when asked, you know, would the US Come to Taiwan's defense in the event it were attacked? And I don't remember the exact formulation, but in Trumpian fashion, he said something to the effect, well, I'll never reveal my hand.

I won't, I will never say the answer to that. I wouldn't want to forecast that. And it seemed a departure from President Biden's not once, not twice, not three times, but four times. We will defend Taiwan, but in fact, it's a reversion to traditional strategic ambiguity. No US President up until President Biden had said, we will definitely defend Taiwan in all circumstances.

In fact, long standing policy had been strategic ambiguity. So, yes, there's Trump characteristics to it, but I would say that's a reversion to longstanding policy with respect to ambiguity. I think there's a series of things that show prioritization of the Taiwan relationship and the Indo Pacific in areas that, that are being cut elsewhere.

 

So, you know, what are the biggest changes in the Trump administration to the region? I would say it's cutting of foreign assistance, development assistance, and the tariffs. Well, guess who got some exemptions on the foreign assistance? Taiwan for foreign military financing, Philippines for foreign military financing and other types of assistance.

Other carved out types of assistance from USAID. So I think what's shaping up is an effort to insulate these very important relationships and this very important work on deterring China when it comes to even the various tools that are going to inevitably be pulled back and diminished, like the foreign assistance account.

I would say also that the work that's done in and around Taiwan related to partnerships and alliances, and you mentioned a couple of things in your opening statement. Pretty strong. Secretary Rubio on his first day, the 21st of January, what does he do? He hosts the quad meeting with Australia, Japan and India.

And what do they do at the quad meeting? Very much with Foreign Minister Jaishankar's approval, they talked about moving more into security issues and military cooperation in the quad. I think that's pretty significant. I think when Prime Minister Sheba visited Washington, if you read the joint statement, which maybe people in this room would, most people wouldn't.

It's nerdy inside baseball stuff. But that joint statement, if you hadn't, if I hadn't known better, I would have thought you had just given it to the Japanese team and said, go in the room and write your dream joint statement. And you know we'll see if we can deliver on part of that.

We delivered on all of it. The joint statement was a complete endorsement of all the changes to command and control. It was a complete endorsement of Japan moving into the direction of counter strike and the associated doctrine and roles and missions discussion. It was an endorsement of cooperation in the southwest island chain.

Footstomp that. Where's the southwest island chain? It's right next to Taiwan. Yonaguni is actually closest foreign country to Taiwan is not China. It's actually Japan through the southwest island chain in Yonaguni. So it's a fabulous statement. Look at the ongoing work with the Philippines to continue the investment in the Enhanced Defense Cooperation.

Agreement sites now up to nine sites. So I would say, yes, there are certainly questions about the overall trajectory. Will this be sustained? Will this be continued? I think the early signs are quite positive in terms of work with partners and allies in the Indo Pacific. Taiwan, of course, you know, I've traveled there recently.

You were there ten days ago. The overwhelming sentiment is, I would say, anxiety and probably not helped by the tariff announcement of 32%, which was subsequent to our visits. But they are thinking through, you know, how to position themselves to keep up their end of the bargain of being a strong partner for the United States, how they can be a good regional and global citizen.

And they're starting to roll out various proposals, some of which are more advanced than others. You mentioned some of them. Taiwan has said they will spend up to 3% of GDP on defense, and has added to that, that that is a floor, not a ceiling, that they intend to go higher.

Now there is the little matter of the Legislative Yuan and whether or not they will go along with that. And right now they have frozen parts of the defense budget. And are causing some difficulties. But there is every intention to push forward, as I understand it, with a special budget, special military budget, probably fall time frame, September, October, to get them up to that 3% level, that's, I would say, pretty significant.

You mentioned the investment, so more investment from TSMC, which is, by the way, not done without political cost and risk in Taiwan. Lai Ching-te and his team are being accused of letting the United States hollow out Taiwan's key industry, and really the key, in the minds of many, their sort of protector of having this prized role in the global supply chain.

But nonetheless, they're talking about very significant investments in the United States to help with the goal of bringing more chip manufacturing back to the United States. I think that's very significant. Their role in regional and global citizenship. I mentioned in some instances there may be things that would get less attention and be valued highly by this administration.

But worth mentioning, Taiwan has been a major supporter of Ukrainian refugee assistance in Poland. That's significant. But the ongoing work in the Pacific Islands, particularly if the United States is going to cut back on some of our programs, USAID and the like, you know, out of its diplomatic allies.

Three key partners remain in the Pacific Islands. Let me see if I can. Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu-

>> Kharis Templeman: Yes.

>> Randall Schriver: I believe, that should not be discounted. And certainly that is a contested space between the United States and China, and Taiwan plays an oversized role in those places.

So I think those are certainly things worth noting. You know, the lingering question is, you know, is this all sort of, as you said, building trade space for the ultimate deal? And I think the search for the Big Deal is part of this president's character. And I think it's sort of irresistible to be on the lookout and be always sorta searching for that space.

But things are not off to a great start with China with Xi Jinping, particularly after the tariffs and the Chinese retaliatory tariffs of supposedly 34%. But there's no plan to meet. If you talk to people at senior levels, they're fine to wait until probably the fall, probably past UN General assembly meeting.

 

I mean, that could change, particularly if Xi Jinping was willing to come to Mar A Lago. I think that meeting could happen a lot sooner. But I think he's hoping that we'll send our president to the emperor in Beijing, which is how they always like to start the relationship.

But if he doesn't come to Mar-a-Lago, I don't think we'll see, probably, a summit meeting till after UN General Assembly, so late into the year. He didn't want the embarrassment of what we ultimately saw, a precipitous withdrawal that involved casualties. And then there's, you know, there's sort of the two sides of the president, right?

Yes. He's always looking for a deal. He won't take a bad deal. Now, caveat. He's got to recognize it's a bad deal, but, you know, he won't take a bad deal. And I represented DOD at our North Korea, various North Korean negotiations. And I was at the summit in Singapore when we got a deal some said was not a great deal, but it was a deal, got two signatures on it.

And then I was in Hanoi when he walked away. And, you know, he walked away because the North Koreans were unwilling to give him, you know, a sufficiently attractive deal. I also participated in the Afghanistan work. I would say even there, although his impulse was to very much get out and very much put that behind us, you know, he was committed to a conditional withdrawal and in many instances, really kind of fought, I think, his own instincts to pull out more precipitously for a variety of reasons.

He didn't want to leave equipment behind and all the costs associated with that. He didn't want the embarrassment of what we ultimately saw, a precipitous withdrawal that involved casualties. But even there, I think his role in overseeing the work of Zal Khalilzad and the team, he wasn't interested in a bad deal.

So, you know, when you look at what he might contemplate on Taiwan, number one, Taiwan is not his to give away. And it's not at all clear if there was a diminished US Security commitment that Taiwan capitulates, particularly where Japan's interests are concerned and others interests are concerned.

But first and foremost Taiwan's own interest. And for a lot of people, Taiwan does have value and means something beyond just chips. And I don't know that the president falls into that category of having affinity for a fellow democracy, that religious freedom, and shares our values and good global citizenship and regional citizenship.

He cares about geography, and if you care about that first island chain, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines into Indonesia, Taiwan is in the center of it. If you care about the second island chain, you certainly want to prevent a pathway through the first island chain to the second island chain.

And if you care about competing with China, Taiwan really is the front lines of that. So my own assessment is if Taiwan continues to do the things it's talking about doing, which is spending on defense, investing in the United States, investing in its own resilience. And by the way, that's another topic.

Now, there's a lot that could disrupt that. That doesn't account for all the money they're spending on resilience, energy resilience, communications resilience, civil defenses and the hardening and the shelters and all that. You've probably seen some, probably observe some local exercises of people going to shelters and things like none of that money is accounted for in the 3%.

That's different buckets. So I think if they continue to do what they pledge to do and are in the process of doing, if other countries in the region continue to stress the importance of this, you know, in many instances, what gets to the president through the bureaucracy is not always weighted even as highly as things he might hear from trusted foreign leaders.

And we know, Prime Minister Ishiba, Taiwan security is Japan's security. We know that more and more countries care deeply about the environment in the Taiwan Strait, not necessarily for affinity for Taiwan, but because of their prominence in the global supply chain and the important advantages that China would gain should Taiwan be lost.

So I do think the president has an appreciation for all these things. And when advised by the team that he has, I have a level of confidence and optimism that we're going to remain on a trajectory of US Taiwan relations growing stronger. Now, there's a lot that could disrupt that.

He's saying he's gonna provide subsidies to some of the most affected industries. Well, he's not retaliating per se. He's saying he's gonna provide subsidies to some of the most affected industries. That could Result in a counter action from the Trump administration. He's also saying he wants to talk about lowering tariffs and a deal.

That's good. But I guess what I'm saying is along the way, you know, these are, this is a highly transactional president. These are highly transactional relationships for him. So there will be some, I think, importance to a very steady, sustained approach from Taipei to ensure that that remains the case.

So I don't know if that's a good enough way to.

>> Kharis Templeman: That's a good start.

>> Randall Schriver: Set the stage.

>> Kharis Templeman: You've really done an excellent job. So I want to pull on a couple things you laid out in your remarks. And the first is linkage. So there's a lot of concern in Taiwan that Trump's president Trump's approach to a bargain with China is, as it is in many of his negotiating environments, to link everything together and to try to take items that are typically negotiated in a much smaller forum and tie them to one another.

And so there's worry in Taiwan that a grand bargain with China would include things that have nothing to do with China's own economic interests, but a lot to do with Taiwan's security. How do you see that? And so what is this administration likely to do if there is a conversation with China about the friction in the US China relationship and what should they do?

So I'm raising the possibility that those could be two different things.

>> Randall Schriver: So I expect the Chinese will attempt to bring Taiwan into virtually any conversation, particularly if it gets to the point of what does the big deal look like. And I say that based on three decades of almost every discussion Taiwan has brought in at some point.

So I think if you look at the things that we're likely to ask from the Chinese, it's going to be very hard for China. And the president lived through phase one trade deal which was basically a Chinese pledge to buy a lot more US Stuff. And it wasn't honored, it wasn't implemented.

The little matter of COVID of course was the major disruptor to that nonetheless wasn't honored. And that didn't even get us to a phase two trade deal which was going to be the harder structural reforms, removing a lot of the non tariff barriers to trade which in China's instance are everywhere, regulatory currency manipulation, their own internal investment constraints.

So, you know, I think, although again, the president is susceptible to look for the big deal, what is going to be asked of China is going to be to be very, very difficult. And the things that, you know, another president might ask for, you know, Biden administration spent a lot of time asking the Chinese to pull back support for Russia in the war in Ukraine.

I doubt that's going to be a prominent feature here. So I just. The way I imagine it unfolding, it's going to be difficult for the Chinese to make credible, meaningful pledges in exchange for the President to do something on that doesn't even answer the question. What's that? Something, you know, suspending arms sales or making a more explicit statement regarding US Support for Taiwan in the event of a contingency that we wouldn't come to Taiwan's defense.

It just seems that falls in that category of a bad deal that I don't think the President would be inclined to take.

>> Kharis Templeman: That's reassuring. In fact, I'm struck by confidence and optimism here. You mentioned that a couple of times. I'm feeling a little bit better about things.

>> Randall Schriver: I could give you my other version of speech, which.

>> Kharis Templeman: So I wanted to raise another question about Beijing which is the third triangle of this relation or third corner of this triangle relationship. Beijing's Taiwan strategy, to my mind, hasn't really changed a whole lot since 2016.

 

They've incremented up, but it's been basically the same approach to the Taiwan folks and to the US and so I wonder if you share that view and if you could tell us what you think Beijing is trying to accomplish with the heightened activities around Taiwan.

>> Randall Schriver: Yeah, I do.

There's a real lack of imagination there. It's the same toolkit, the same tools that seem to be applied in greater amounts or greater weights or whatever the right term would be. I do think we've got to be careful of assessing the success or failure of Beijing's approach from our perspective versus what Beijing might be seeing.

And yes, we have a third DPP administration in a row. That's probably not great from Beijing's perspective, but from Beijing's perspective also, what do they see? The LY is thrown basically into chaos because there's no outright majority party. There's a loose coalition between the Kuomintang and the TPP.

But the Kuomintang is the most represented party in the ly, at least for now, until recalls. But even with recalls, a lot of those are KMT dominated districts. And so, you recall one KMT guy, you're probably going to get another KMT person. So that's, you know, from Beijing's perspective, that's probably signs that, you know, all is not lost and hopeless on the domestic political landscape in Taiwan.

They are seeing increasing isolation. They're pulled. They're stripping away these diplomatic allies of Taiwan. They are seeing a campaign of coercion that is advancing with very little pushback. So the things that. That I think we need to really pay attention to on coercion, it's not just demonstrations through PLA activity to show that they're displeased.

We don't like what Lai Ching just said, and therefore we're going to do some exercises around Taiwan. No, they're actually, Admiral Paparo has said they're moving from training and exercising to rehearsal. So they're actually doing things in the course of these exercises that show that they're getting better and they're preparing for more complex military operations.

So, communications between different platforms, data links, testing those out, the kind of combined joint operations that get into higher levels of complexity, operations off the eastern side of Taiwan from a military perspective, they're doing more complex things. They're getting better, and very little pushback. They're also introducing this lawfare piece, which is really quite interesting.

When there's an argument over who is the rightful sovereign to respond to a fisherman in distress on one side of the Taiwan Strait or the other. That sounds like legalese and who cares is extraordinarily consequential. If China has the wherewithal to respond and then make a legal claim that it's their right to respond to a fisherman in distress on the east side of the middle line of the Taiwan Strait, that is a huge game changer.

And what you're seeing in this lawfare is these incremental statements. But also statements backed up by activities and actions. How far are we away from them saying we need to inspect commercial vessels going into Jilong or Kaohsiung as the rightful sovereign? Beijing's ultimate goal, I think remains to win without fighting and ultimately to turn a campaign of pressure and coercion and isolation into political capitulation in Taiwan.

And I don't think from Zhongnanhai´s perspective they are without hope, given some of these things I just described.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, so let me elaborate or ask you to elaborate a little bit on this lawfare piece. And in particular actually let me blow it up a little bit and ask about gray zone activities, what we sometimes call salami slicing in the region.

There is not a consensus in Washington, as I understand it, about whether gray zone activities are important or not. Whether the US should actually care about the fact that there may be more flights across the midline of the strait today than there were yesterday, about whether there's changes to websites listing Taiwan as part of China and all, you know, the whole toolkit of things that Beijing can do.

And I've heard people, including people who are likely to have a position in this administration, argue we shouldn't pay attention to that at all. What really matters is whether Beijing can pull off the high end invasion scenario and everything else below that, as long as they can't physically occupy Taiwan is not worth our time.

What do you think of that argument?

>> Randall Schriver: I think it's highly flawed.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay.

>> Randall Schriver: I don't put myself in that camp. And the interesting thing is people who say that if you talk about Second Thomas Shoall in the Philippines, they have a very different attitude about gray zone in South China Sea or you talk about the Senkaku's in the East China Sea, they have a very different attitude.

So there's this sort of Taiwan exception to this crew that thinks the gray zone doesn't matter there. I guess in fairness, if you stretch their argument out more fully, what they would say is, and this is the case because of very limited resources in Taiwan. And because they've been investing in the wrong types of capabilities for so long, they don't have the luxury of doing it all.

And so they have to protect themselves from the high end invasion. But I don't see these things as sort of binary. And I think inattention to the gray zone ironically could make the high end conflict more likely, not less likely. I think the Chinese have to see pushback, otherwise they'll just keep going.

And I think at some point a Level of isolation and desperation would lead to that more of that sentiment of willingness to capitulate politically and really start to limit our options to you know what again, Admiral Paparo, if he were here, and what are the two or three things that worry you most?

Number one, he would say is lack of strategic warning. Why is warning decreasing? Well, it's because the Chinese are operating at such intense levels in the gray zone that they could easily turn that into a kinetic, more aggressive operation of some kind, if not a full on invasion in a manner that would give us very little warning.

And remember, you know, unlike Japan, Korea, now Australia, now the Philippines a little bit, we don't have US forces on Taiwan. So warning for us is everything. The tyranny of time and distance and getting forces into place to effectuate our op plan, warning is everything. So I don't think we sort of have this luxury of inattention and pushback, non pushback in the gray zone.

I think for Taiwan there are other implications. You know, they call it cognitive warfare and sort of the drain that that has on the population. If they don't see their political leaders pushing back, they don't see their military out there doing things. There are serious questions about sustainability and the ultimate answer might actually not be either or.

It might be different, it might be Taiwan investing in a lot of autonomous unmanned systems and really sort of optimizing the pushback and intercept ops plans or concepts of operation. So that every Chinese vessel gets a interrogation of some sort, but it's not always going to be an exquisite expensive F16 or frigate from Taiwan.

So some combination of the manned, unmanned, autonomous, that's actually a fairly affordable type solution which answers the resource question and answers Taiwan's concerns about the gray zone and preserves a lot of space for counter invasion capabilities.

>> Kharis Templeman: From the US perspective, do we have a role to play in pushing back and what tools are available in the US diplomatic toolkit to respond punish the PRC side for these incremental changes in the status quo and potentially to deter down the road changes?

>> Randall Schriver: Yeah, I do think we do, sorry.

>> Kharis Templeman: Yeah.

>> Randall Schriver: I do think we have a role to play and I think we've not been very active in this information space airspace. We got confronted in the UN with the interpretation, you'll tell me.

>> Kharis Templeman: The 2758.

>> Randall Schriver: We all heard it how many times when the Chinese were manipulating the interpretation to their advantage.

And so we finally got a statement out that it was not our understanding of the interpretation and started to have that discussion with other countries. We're not having that discussion on these various aspects of lawfare in the Taiwan Strait. And we have, we have every right. If you look at the Taiwan Relations act, it essentially holds in place a lot of the rights and privileges and recognitions that Taiwan enjoyed as a recognized diplomatic partner in their new status as, you know, an unrecognized diplomatic partner.

So they have, in our own view, according to our law, they have the right to exercise as a sovereign. We don't recognize them diplomatically, but they have certain rights and privileges to act as a sovereign. And it shows up very directly in some of our interactions with Taiwan as a recognized separate customs union and that's why we have separate tariffs for Taiwan and so on and so forth.

But we have every right to talk about whether or not Taiwan has the ability to control what happens around its ports, its various maritime rights. Our law gives us the firm ground to comment on that, and we're not. So I think we should be speaking up more on the lawfare piece, certainly.

I think on the deterrence and the more sort of hard power piece, we're doing mostly the right things on these various posture initiatives. There is a comedian Will Rogers, even if you're going, even if you're on the right track, you can still get run over if you're not going fast enough.

So we have nine Ekta sites in the Philippines, I think we have one completed Basa Air Force Base. And the ones that are greatest geographic proximity to Taiwan, the ones in Northern Luzon, are very much works in progress would be generous.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, our audience has been very patient, I want to open it up, I know we've got a lot of experts in the room.

If you have a question, I'd invite you to raise your hand, and we've got a gentleman coming around with a microphone. And I would be obligated, I think, to go with Larry Diamond in the front row, first up. Up here.

>> Larry Diamond: Okay, I'll just speak up. There's an argument that the US should be much, first of all, that was, in my mind, an absolutely brilliant talk and also I think a very balanced and fair one.

There's an argument that some people are making, many actually, that the US should be much more active in helping the US push back against these gray zone activities ,that we need ships there in the Taiwan Strait, we need planes there. We can't come even close to doing it probably half the time, but one or two times out of 10, there should be an American presence there.

And related to that, on the Taiwan side of a much more muscular and robust pushback against the gray zone activities is they're buying more of the, and you alluded to this, the kinds of weapons that are needed for that. But isn't the Trump administration going to push them to keep buying very expensive American weapons systems that will be good for our trade balance, but maybe isn't the best use of even 3% of GDP?

>> Randall Schriver: So thanks, Larry. I appreciate it and appreciate the kind words. So on the first part, I do think the US should be doing more to push back, but we have serious capacity constraints ourselves. You talk about ships needed in the Indo-Pacific. Admiral Paparo's got real constraints on his hands there.

So I think priority mission areas like the resupply of Second Thomas Shoal in the Philippines for me is a priority. I think some pushback in the Taiwan Strait, I think some pushback around the Senkakus, not that, the Japanese are actually doing pretty well in terms of meeting that head-on platform for platform.

It is stressing them, but I think occasional joint patrols from the US would help. But we've got capacity constraints that have to be taken into account. So I think I would say it a little differently on the Trump administration's approach to security assistance for Taiwan. So we did go through a prioritization process where we said, here's the priorities based on what we think you need and what's affordable and what's sustainable.

And actually, when the Biden administration came in and they said these are not only priorities, we're going to be very directive and we're going to say, you can't buy these things, you have to buy these things. A lot of people blame me cuz I was the one who signed out the priorities memo and I said, well, wait a minute, we said those were priorities.

Taiwan still has agency. They still have a democracy. It is still their existential threat. They still get the opportunity to say, we wanna buy certain things, and we should be somewhat permissive in that. And that's how we approached it in the first Trump term. There are people who I would say would fit very comfortably in the Biden administration's approach to the so called asymmetric capabilities.

There's a very senior person in the Trump administration who coined the term, if it flies, it dies in Taiwan and we shouldn't be selling these exquisite fighter jets. So what I think going to see and already seeing as I understand it is more of a bilateral discussion, not a directive, you can buy this, you can't buy that, but more of a bilateral discussion.

It's already underway with respect to the special budget. And I believe the US Will be communicating priorities and I believe the US Will be communicating what they think is affordable and sustainable. And I believe they will be leaning in against certain capabilities. I've heard that from the most reliable sources, defense industry, who are seeing difficulties in moving forward with some of their programs.

But at the end of the day, I do think there'll be some deference for Taiwan if they say, we understand everything you're saying, but here's a priority for us in the gray zone. And we're basically telling them to ignore that and we're not stepping in and providing that capability.

That's a real problem for Taiwan. So I anticipate there'll be a discussion at least on a couple of key platforms that might lean in the direction that wouldn't necessarily support the asymmetric counter invasion strategy, but might be good for gray zone. We'll see. There is another irony, though with what Taiwan really needs is they need munitions and they need spares and they need maintenance and they need all this asymmetric, attritable, survivable stuff.

And by the way, we want you to spend 3% of GDP, or if you're Bridge Colby, you wanna spend 10% of GDP on defense. Well, you're not getting a 3% on munitions and spares, right? So we do have to have a process that tries to meet these various commitments and expectations in the most sensible way.

Again, I'll use the overused phrase of Washington, cautiously optimistic. I think that process is underway.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, all right, other questions? Go over here. Paul Wolfowitz.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: I shared Larry's comment that's very reassuring that you're around. But I have a question which is too personal, which is who actually will listen to you in the administration or on the Hill?

But that's not the question. I have a different one.

>> Randall Schriver: I still take my calls, so.

>> Paul Wolfowitz: Asymmetric warfare business, I've never quite understood how it's supposed to work. Taiwan is not Ukraine. It doesn't have a friendly land border to a friendly country. Once the PRC troop, PLA guys get on the ground in Taiwan, it's guerrilla warfare.

It's all over, I think. Is there a logic that I'm missing? Probably.

>> Randall Schriver: Thanks, Paul. It's a great question. I think the concept of asymmetric warfare is sound at a very fundamental level. Taiwan is small, small population, China's big, and so you have to think in asymmetric ways.

But I think it's really morphed into things that are not very helpful and in some ways harmful when, not a partisan statement. But when the previous administration talked about asymmetric weapons and asymmetric platforms, well, wait a minute. Weapons aren't asymmetric in and of themselves. Inherently they're not. It's how you use them and what's the strategy and what's the doctrine, right?

And so I think this whole conversation morphed into a direction of you're either really smart and agree with us that Taiwan has to buy these certain things cuz they're asymmetric, or you're not. You're wasteful and you wanna continue doing things the old ways. And what I think your question rightfully points out, Paul, is you have to take Taiwan's unique circumstances, including its stature as a small island, small population, its unique geography.

And then figure out a prioritization of the missions and the threats and things you want Taiwan to be capable to do on its own. And Taiwan is not without some advantage here. 80 nautical miles of water, mountainous, inhospitable terrain, unfavorable sea conditions for most of the year, very few favorable ports for embarkation of troops.

So you can build a concept of operations for the defense of Taiwan, given Taiwan. Taiwan's resources that would be very credible, I think. And it definitely includes thinking about civil defenses and guerrilla warfare and what happens if the PLA gets a lodgment on Taiwan somewhere because the game's not over there.

I mean, you've been there. A lot of us have spent time there. The terrain is pretty difficult for an invading force. Ian Easton has a new piece out, Naval War College, that it talks about why the US decided not to invade Formosa and basically bypass it before the decision to drop the nuclear device.

And time and again, when people have looked at this from a military standpoint, it's a very difficult target. So I think the whole conversation about asymmetric warfare and Taiwan having an asymmetric strategy morphed in a pretty unhelpful direction. And I think it needs to be grounded in exactly the kinds of things you're saying.

Taiwan's geography, Taiwan's population size, the threats they face, and what they could reasonably expect from outside support and then go from there. And I don't care, I can make a weapon symmetric, asymmetric. I can make it offensive, I can make it defensive. I mean, it depends on the strategy and depends on concepts of operation.

>> Kharis Templeman: Great. This gentleman right here in front, bring the mic up to you.

>> Ben Sharma: First, thank you for joining us and sharing your point of view.

>> Kharis Templeman: Sorry. Could you introduce yourself as well?

>> Ben Sharma: Sorry.

>> Kharis Templeman: No worries.

>> Ben Sharma: I'm Ben Sharma. I'm an alumni. And so I wanted to ask you, in the scenario where we were just talking about the invasion and so it's a hypothetical, assuming it doesn't go well for us and Taiwan and the defense, and China is able to basically secure the island to some degree and the guerrilla warfare, all those other things have played out.

And so it's kind of the end game. Do you think the strategy at that point? Because we did talk about the chips, it's kind of an elephant in the room. Would be one where the US would try to take out the industrial capacity of the chips through sabotage and also take the intellectual assets out of the country to basically not let those fall into the hands of the invaders.

And if you don't feel that this is a plausible kind of scenario in the end game, it'd be interesting to hear why. And also, what might be another alternative to this in the last play of the game?

>> Randall Schriver: So the only place I've heard anybody talk about bombing like TSMC is in, like, outside of governments and think tanks and maybe some academic institutions.

And I've never heard that discussion inside government other than a reaction to hey, did you read this crazy article about we're going to bomb tsnc? It's really, it's never been a consideration as far as I'm aware. The idea though of human capital, I'll add another, starving it of the intellectual property and the design.

TSMC is a remarkable story, but it's a place of manufacturing. It's largely relying on design still from the United States. If you look at the whole value chain, it's the Qualcomms and others that are doing the most advanced designs that Taiwan is building. Presumably you could cut that off and you start to starve it of at least the high end designs that they would need to continue to occupy that very special place of domination of the high end, most advanced chipsets.

And I think through that combination you'd be able to not kill it, but it wouldn't sort of be China getting the goose that laid the golden egg and all is well and we all carry on. I don't think that's the scenario that I would expect. I think TSMC and some of the other great companies in Taiwan would cease to be what they are today through other means rather than.

Now, we have a lot of other problems related to chip supply chain beyond just Taiwan and the role that TSMC plays in the high end chips. We're still reliant at the component and critical mineral level. We're still relying on China. We've got all kinds of problems. But this is one.

I don't think we're at the point where anybody that I'm aware of inside government or indopacom is saying we need to bomb this. If we get to that worst case scenario.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, let's see. Let me get somebody at the back. Let's go. William.

>> William Yang: Hi, my name is William Yang.

I'm a senior analyst at International Crisis Group based in Taipei. My question is regarding. I think we all can agree that there are some very reliable, familiar people in the White House right now that are very, you know, I think constant, constantly engaging with Taiwan. But the past week we also saw how fragile those people are right now because of some of the domestic challenges that extend from that whole signal debacle.

And the fact that this administration somehow is right now being preoccupied with some other global challenges in different parts of the world that the administration is trying to wrap it up or end but seems to be very difficult to actually do that. And attention and intention to try to shift to focus on Indo Pacific seems to be sort of like blocked by that and China at the same time, from my perspective in Taipei, looks is really stepping up their efforts to reestablish new normals through these exercises, finding excuses in the Taiwanese administration's responses that they view as the pretext that they can use.

How do you look at the reality that the Trump administration in the second term might actually face difficulties to really assert its agenda on prioritizing efforts around competition with China and the. Also support for Taiwan?

>> Randall Schriver: Yeah, that's the $64,000 question. As we used to say, if you're of a certain age and you know what that means.

>> Kharis Templeman: 100,000 now, inflation.

>> Randall Schriver: Tariffs. 200,000.

>> Kharis Templeman: Yes, right.

>> Randall Schriver: I would say the signs I'm seeing now suggest that they, they want to focus on the Indo Pacific and this challenge and, you know, distractions and noise and other things and stuff happening in the world. That's part of every administration and that's life.

I think so far, they're mostly on track. If I were to be more pessimistic and I were to give you the other version of the speech, I think there's a higher cost to pay for cutting back foreign aid and foreign assistance and these tariffs than we're actually factoring in right now.

And, you know, if the contested areas of Asia are some of the countries of Southeast Asia, we are doing ourselves, I think, great harm cutting off aid and cutting off MCC and cutting off INL programs in places like Indonesia and the Philippines and Malaysia's not as big, but some of the Pacific islands, and I think.

There are some that wanna see this as sort of soft power, but hard power's over here. We can do this and not pay a price here. I think they're very much connected in a couple ways. I think there are new opportunities for China, you know, not that they're very good at soft power, but we've left a vacuum in some critical places.

Number two, it was done in such a ham fisted way, we didn't even realize in some instances what some of the second and third order effects would be. Let me give you a couple examples in the Philippines. So we said, we wanna protect the military work at ECDA and I don't know if you're familiar with these sites in the Philippines.

So Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, nine military bases in the Philippines, they've given us space to put warehouses and to forward deployed things. Mostly humanitarian supplies at this point so that we can be good partners on disaster relief should there be a natural disaster in the Philippines. But one can imagine in the future munitions, other types of logistics, support, etc.

So okay, we're gonna preserve that, but we're gonna cut AID because we don't like AID. Nobody bothered to look into the fact that the ECDA sites themselves were being supplied by AID trucks. So stuff showed up in port, there was no trucks to take them to the ECDA sites.

And the Philippines started charging us storage, which if you have spent any time in the federal government and know how budgeting works, nobody had money for storage. And so we had to basically donate a lot of humanitarian supplies to the Philippines government. So that's uh-oh, that's not good.

Turns out the work that we do at the Philippines Coast Guard was funded not through FMF, not through defense spending, which we said we're not gonna impact that. Well, that was a state inl international law enforcement program because Coast Guard is part of law enforcement. So we suspended all our assistance to the Philippine Coast Guard, which is on the absolute front lines when it comes to the South China Sea and the contested areas there.

So I think we're going to have a little trouble pulling back from this. And I think there were some own goals that unfortunately we haven't even stopped, there's probably more coming. So I think that ham fisted way also contributes to this. I think the bottom has to settle on this.

And I think we're in a process now with Congress where as they go into 2026, they better reconcile this stuff. If they don't, it's an admission by Congress themselves that we don't matter, because one could say 20, 25, we're on a cr. DOGE is new, new administration, confusion, okay?

We authorized things and we appropriated money for things that aren't actually gonna be implemented, okay? Oops. You can't do that into a second year. If you're Congress, you can't authorize and appropriate a second year of things that aren't going to be implemented without saying we don't matter. We're just gonna be completely ignored.

So they have to reconcile in this coming year. And I think that helps us sort of find the floor on where does all the cutting and all that sort of land? And then I think, you know, people can adjust when you've got a new baseline. And, you know, maybe some people will say the stock market's going to do that with tariffs, but in the security space, military space, people can adjust when they know the new baselines.

And my hope is that Taiwan, we have preserved the fmf, we have preserved the training, we have preserved foreign military sales, we have preserved a lot of the military education opportunities. So I think when the dust settles, Taiwan will continue to enjoy a place of prominence in our strategy.

>> Kharis Templeman: Alex, yeah.

>> Alex: Hi, Randy. Alex Capri National University of Singapore so TSMC has committed about $165 billion now, right, with the sites in Arizona, plus, you know, 65, plus another hundred billion. But Trump is talking about, or he's calling the CHIPS Act a horrible, horrible thing, right?

How do you see that playing out, right? I mean, we've got the tariffs now. Now we've got Trump talking about, I don't know what's going to happen, right, with, with the CHIPS Act. How do you see that playing out and how important is it for CHIPS funding and tax rebates, etc, to stay in place for TSMC?

>> Randall Schriver: So I could find flaw in the CHIPS Act, right? Particularly when you measured against what members intended to do. Remember, it was this big China bill, and it was going to be all things to help us compete effectively with China. And as it funneled down to things that members could agree on, it became basically, how do we incentivize rebirth and regrowth in this aspect of the CHIPS industry, the manufacturing aspect of the CHIPS industry back in the United States?

I think I in no way could speak for President Trump, and I don't think he liked it cuz it didn't happen on his watch, it was the last administration. Even though there had been a lot of communication about the legislative agenda related to competition with China wasn't on his watch.

What I think will happen, I think the tariff issue is a little more complicated. It does seem, despite everything that's being said, it does seem that it's the opening bid in a longer negotiation. And my guess is that the CHIPS act will probably be criticized but continued to be implemented because it's very popular in Congress and it's very popular if it's in your state or district of receiving the funding.

It is an enabler for even more investment like the TSMC investment. So I think it'll continue to be implemented even it's occasionally criticized. I think what we, what the bigger unknown is sort of how the tariff thing settles and how that ultimately affects investment patterns. And, you know, their argument is it's going to be helpful.

I don't know that that's the case when you get into counterterroriffing and when you get into any next phase of negotiation. But I guess I'm interested in what comes post CHIPS Act also? The work that I do on the US China Commission recommendations to Congress, the work that the select committee does on China, the work that's happening in the Armed Services Committee.

Cuz the NDA's the only bill that passes usually, CHIPS Act notwithstanding. There's a lot of discussion of what's after CHIPS Act. Is there CHIPS two, is there? And this would be on Trump's watch. And this would be, you know, why is DFC protected right now? Well, Trump administration had a lot of input into Development Finance Corporation.

So I think if there's an effort On a post chips act of chips 2 or some other 2.0, I think that's where the rubber will really hit the road.

>> Kharis Templeman: Okay, we've got time for maybe one more question. I'll take this gentleman in front.

>> John Yu: Good afternoon. Thanks for coming to talk about US-Taiwan relationship.

Long time no see you.

>> Randall Schriver: Good to see you, John.

>> John Yu: Yes, thank you. My name is John Yu. I was born in Taiwan. Right now we just formed a new organization called Global Alliance for Taiwan Technology Diplomacy. By the way, Karen was invited as a keynote speaker which was held on August 11, 2024, last year.

I'm glad to see Loren coming here to talk about this subject. Before I ask you two simple questions, I'd like to clarify, which one has more power comparing to the executive order was US law. We all know US-Taiwan relations act is a law, it's not the executive order.

But now I heard Randy said, President Biden also issued executive order to protect Taiwan. So by comparison, if one day President Trump order say, I support Taiwan independency, for instance, which way override the US-Taiwan Relations Act or not? That's my leading question. Now the real question number one.

I know Randy, you mentioned US does not support Taiwan independency. What does that really mean only if one day vast majority Taiwanese people which line dying now they are pro study codes. They are not interested to recur independency, if one day happen what the US government officially will say go ahead boy, you do whatever you want or no, you cannot, I don't support you.

So what's the really impact is, political ambiguity or is it really to come down PRCs back to US and South? That's question number two. Question number two, number one, sorry. Question number two, since we all know TSMC is holding stuck for Taiwan economic growth, I believe the near future TSMC has committed to investing a lot of money.

With that investment to give US-Taiwan to improve or to get even better the next level of US-Taiwan relations. That's my second question. Thank you, Randy.

>> Randall Schriver: Thanks, John. I think the second question for so I think the original TSMC investment was negotiated in the first Trump administration and it was very much about solidifying the relationship our bonds and it wasn't.

It was always understood that the crown jewels, the highest capabilities to produce the highest end exquisite chips would remain in Taiwan. But that this diversification would be helpful to the US the biggest market for Taiwan and would ultimately also contribute to the US goals of regaining a manufacturing capability and an ecosystem that itself might spin into higher levels of production of advanced chips.

But the deal was very much informed by wanting to strengthen US-Taiwan relations, not alter them in a way that would be disadvantageous to Taiwan. And again, the crown jewels remaining in Taipei. So I think further investment is probably along those same lines. I think the scale of it is quite impressive, and it all comes to fruition, at's very meaningful.

And the US should be appreciative of Taiwan's investment at that level and that magnitude. Your first question about we do not support it. So the comment I made is we actually took that off the State Department website. So we no longer say we do not support Taiwan independence, but presumably that's still policy.

And out of the things I spend time on when I was at the State Department, I feel like I spent like an inordinate amount of time on this, like, explaining. Because to normal, like air breathers,

>> Kharis Templeman: L

>> Randall Schriver: Like to say, we oppose independence, we do not support independence, we don't care about, it doesn't make a difference, it sounds the same.

And I had a lot of instances where I'd get called by the media, like did your policy, Colin Powell just said we oppose Taiwanese independence. Is this a change in US policy? No. So you really have to be steeped in the nomenclature and the history and everything. And if you are, then what it means is it's we take a passive position on it and don't actively oppose it, but nor do we support it.

So to say we oppose Taiwanese independence means we're going to proactively do things to prevent it. We would speak out against it. We would say we oppose it. If Taiwan were to take those steps, presumably that could have some consequences. You know, we might be less inclined to support Taiwan in the event of military action by the PLA if it's in reaction to a declaration of independence.

So to say you oppose independence has all kinds of implications. To say we do not support is saying, you know, we're basically taking a passive view. We're not going to proactively support it and say, that's great, go do it, nor are we going to actively oppose it. So in that, if you have that understanding, if Taiwan were to, through whatever democratic process, make a declaration of independence, if you were to be consistent, you would then say, that was the choice of the people of Taiwan and we move on and we move forward.

I'm not saying that would be the case, but that would be the consistent position. If you pulled that thread far enough in that direction. Well, they're probably constitutional scholars and people who know this more. So there, there are some areas where the president has a lot of latitude to issue executive orders under.

Under law. So. And what the president tends to do with this flurry of executive orders is, he would likely invoke something like IEPA, which is emergency, something. He declared national emergencies, which gives him extraordinary powers under the law. And so you have a category of executive orders which he says is being done in furtherance of the law, in his purview with the law.

And then you have executive orders which may be completely outside the law, but he might challenge and say I have the right or the ability to do this because I'm president. And and in that case, you know, it sort of stands unless challenged. Right. And then you have what President Biden did, which was not an executive order, was declaratory policy.

And saying of course we'll come to Taiwan's defense. And declaratory policy is neither, it's not grounded in law or formal executive action, but it's pretty powerful. When the president, there's not the only person who matters, but he's the one person that matters most when he says this is our policy, it's pretty powerful.

So,

>> Kharis Templeman: All right, well on that note, we are at time. I want to thank you all for your patience and for your attention. I also just want to plug again our event on Thursday. Can Taiwan secure the energy supplies it needs to meet its high tech aspirations

We'll do that in this room 3:30 to 5:30. I also wanna thank our great events team for supporting this event, Amy Alonso, Michelle Arojo, and Hilary Weissman, and the rest of the Hoover events team. And also our partner, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco for their continued support.

And finally for the students in the room especially, there is free food in the back. We invite you to take advantage, linger and have informal conversations this space as long as you'd like. So thanks again for coming.