Trump’s choice of Rubio and Waltz sends tough Taiwan message to China

Singapore: If officials in Beijing were harbouring hope that a Trump 2.0 presidency – and its promise of an unpredictable dealmaker back in the Oval Office – could swing the turbulent fortunes of US-China relations in their favour, they have been shaken back to reality.

In amassing the team that he will take to the White House, President-elect Donald Trump has tapped two of Washington’s most trenchant China hawks for critical positions in his incoming administration.

Republican congressman Mike Waltz is set to become his national security adviser, while Senator Marco Rubio has been picked for secretary of state.

Donald Trump at a rally with Marco Rubio, who is expected to be appointed secretary of state, on November 4.Credit: AP

A cornucopia of foreign policy scenarios has already been canvassed in the lead-up to Trump taking office, some of them infused with contradiction, such is the dizzying unpredictability of the president-elect.

Unlike President Joe Biden, Trump has repeatedly equivocated on the question of defending Taiwan in the face of a military threat from China, leading to a widely canvassed theory that the democratic island could be reduced to a bargaining chip to be traded away in a grand deal struck between Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

But in tapping Waltz and Rubio, Trump has sent an early message to Beijing that Washington is unlikely to abandon Taiwan any time soon – or at the very least, he would have to go to war with his top foreign policy advisers first. Something that is also not out of the realm of possibility.

“People like Rubio and Waltz are not people who are likely to give up on Taiwan,” says Professor Peter Dean, director of foreign policy and defence at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney.

Florida representative Mike Waltz will be Donald Trump’s national security adviser.Credit: AP

Their tapping doubles down on what has emerged as a bipartisan consensus foreign policy position in Washington: that strategic rivalry with China is the main game in town, with Taiwan a key flashpoint on which the future of the US-led international liberal world order may ride.

Waltz, a special forces veteran, has been a leading critic of China in the US Congress, and has stated the two countries are in a “cold war” and that China is an “existential threat”. He has supported boosting US ties in the Indo-Pacific to counter Chinese influence, and has backed bolstering the arming of Taiwan.

“We must learn from Ukraine by addressing the threat of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and arming Taiwan NOW before it’s too late,” Waltz tweeted in May 2023.

Rubio, Trump’s former rival for the presidential nomination and a staunch supporter of Taiwan, is poised to become the US’s first top diplomat to be technically barred from entering China. He was sanctioned by Beijing in 2020 for his criticisms of human rights violations in Xinjiang and the Chinese government’s democracy crackdown in Hong Kong.

The two names are probably not what Xi had in mind when he urged the two superpowers to “find the right way … to get along with each other” in his congratulatory message to Trump last week. But nor would he be surprised.

Inside China, Trump is expected to shift the ledger from the Biden administration’s approach of “managing competition” to “winning competition”, says Dr Sun Chenghao, a fellow at Beijing’s Tsinghua University.

“Trump himself does not care about the Taiwan Strait issue and prefers to adopt a ‘transactional’ stance,” Sun wrote in the China Times this week, adding that Trump team staffers would most likely push the administration to expand arms sales to Taiwan, increase the level of official US-Taiwan contacts, and promote Taiwan’s participation in international organisations.

“These measures may not only lead to a high degree of instability in the Taiwan Strait, but may also become a risk point in Sino-US relations.”

As for Taiwan, it is already signalling to the incoming Trump team that it is prepared to ramp up its defence spending, with the UK Financial Times this week reporting that Taipei was considering buying a big package of US weapons. The purchase would serve as an overture to Trump, who has repeatedly complained about allies not paying their way.

“Taiwan knows Uncle Sam helps those who help themselves, so Taiwan has been significantly increasing its defence budget in recent years,” says Wen-ti Sung, a Taipei-based non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub.

“But rapid budget hikes are never going to be easy, especially when Mr Trump is calling on Taiwan to increase its defence budget all the way up to 10 per cent, without specifying a timeframe or a pathway.”

But as many US experts have stressed, an asterisk hangs over all aspects of foreign policy under the president-elect – a sweeping caveat that Dean calls “the mercurial nature of the president and his whims”.

As Trump pursues a new trade war centred on 60 per cent tariffs on Chinese imports, Dean says a key question will be: “How far does the Trump White House go in competition with China, and how much are their major allies and partners – particularly Australia, Japan, South Korea and the Philippines – willing to go with them?” All four countries are more trade-exposed to China than the United States, with Australia the most dependent.

For his part, Trump, last month, dismissed the idea that he would even be confronted with the option of using military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China. He suggested Xi respected him and, in any case, he would wield the threat of slapping further debilitating tariffs on China as deterrence.

“I had a very strong relationship with him,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t have to [use military force] because he respects me and he knows I’m f---ing crazy,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

One of the takeaways from the last Trump administration was the phenomenon of the “final briefer” – that is, the last person to get in the president’s ear often had a profound influence on his thinking.

This puts Waltz and Rubio in powerful positions to shape global security. Whether Trump will listen to them is another question entirely.

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.