In recent weeks and months, the Trump administration has said or done a number of things to appease Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party regarding the independence and viability of the Republic of China.
One of the most dismaying was President Trump’s variously reported phone call to the prime minister of Japan, Sanae Takaichi, in which he did or did not tell her to tone down her public statements about Japan’s willingness to come to the defense of Taiwan if it were attacked by the PRC. If anyone needed to be told to chill out, it was the screeching denizens of CCP consulates and propaganda mills.
However, on the thing that matters most, the ability of Taiwan to defend itself from the mainland, it seems that the U.S. government is once again letting weapons do the talking (Associated Press, December 17, 2025).
The Trump administration has announced a massive package of arms sales to Taiwan valued at more than $10 billion that includes medium-range missiles, howitzers and drones, a move that is sure to infuriate China.
The State Department announced the sales late Wednesday during a nationally televised address by President Donald Trump, who made scant mention of foreign policy issues and did not speak about China or Taiwan at all. U.S.-Chinese tensions have ebbed and flowed during Trump’s second term, largely over trade and tariffs but also over China’s increasing aggressiveness toward Taiwan, which Beijing has said must reunify with the mainland.
The eight arms sales agreements announced Wednesday cover 82 high-mobility artillery rocket systems, or HIMARS, and 420 Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS—similar to what the U.S. had been providing Ukraine during the Biden administration to defend itself from Russia—worth more than $4 billion. They also include 60 self-propelled howitzer systems and related equipment worth more than $4 billion and drones valued at more than $1 billion.
Other sales in the package include military software valued at more than $1 billion, Javelin and TOW missiles worth more than $700 million, helicopter spare parts worth $96 million and refurbishment kits for Harpoon missiles worth $91 million.
The government of the People’s Republic of China won’t be happy about this. But…so what?
