Trumpworld insiders believe Taiwan will likely move to leverage its semiconductor manufacturing empire, a so-called Silicon Shield, in talks with the White House as President Donald Trump mulls the latest sale of American weapons to the island.
The United States has sold weapons to Taiwan for decades, but the Trump administration paused the latest transfer last fall amid frosty relations with China. The subject was a core focus for Chinese President Xi Jinping when he hosted Trump for a state visit earlier this month, and Trump left Beijing without making a “determination” on the issue.
Instead, the president told reporters he would wait to decide until after speaking with Taiwanese President William Lai. A sitting U.S. president has not spoken directly with the president of Taiwan since 1979, though Trump himself spoke with then-Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen when he was technically the president-elect in December 2016.
A Trump-Lai call has yet to be scheduled, but two former senior Trump White House aides told the Washington Examiner the Taiwanese president will almost certainly point to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and the island’s semiconductor industry writ large in order to grease the wheels on the weapons transfer.
John Ullyot, the former National Security Council spokesman from Trump’s first term, specifically referred to Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, with both TSMC and American companies operating on the island, as its “very own Trump card.”
“Taiwan is important geopolitically because it’s a wealthy democracy, so close to Communist China, and seems very important, really, for our economy,” he explained in an interview. “It’s critical on the world stage for its technological achievement or technological capabilities.”
“They’re a critical player on the world stage when it comes to a very important technology, a very important product that fuels much of our modern era,” Ullyot continued. “Now, in the era of AI, we will be supportive of Taiwan generally, but we’re even more supportive of them because they have that critical technology.”
A former senior White House official from Trump’s second term was even more blunt in their assessment of the situation.
“I think the Taiwanese posture right now is that is their biggest bargaining chip, for lack of a better word,” that person told the Washington Examiner. “I think kind of all of their foreign diplomacy and their entire philosophy is built around chips. It is one of their key leverage points, so I’d be amazed if they didn’t bring it up.”
White House officials declined to comment for this story.
Semiconductors, and TSMC in particular, factor into both Trump’s push to boost domestic manufacturing and the national security focus his administration has placed on emergent technologies.
Just over a month after Trump was sworn in for his second term, TSMC announced a $100 billion expansion to its footprint in Arizona, with plans to break ground on fabrication plants, two additional packaging facilities, and a new American research and development center.
Trump celebrated the foreign investment, hosting TSMC CEO C.C. Wei in the Oval Office on March 3, 2025, where he claimed the projects would create “many thousands of jobs.”
In turn, Wei declared that TSMC’s American presence would “support” American growth of artificial intelligence, another pet issue of the president.
Furthermore, in January of this year, Trump signed an executive order outlining that rebuilding America’s semiconductor manufacturing capacity was “critical” for economic development, while relying on imported chips would “threaten to impair the national security” of the country.
Despite the fanfare from the Trump administration, Taiwan and TSMC could walk back their investment in America with very little injury to TSMC’s bottom line. Earlier this year, TSMC publicly bucked calls from the Trump administration to reshore some 40% of its production capacity to the U.S., and industry analysts believe TSMC’s Arizona facilities, once fully operational, would only account for between 5% and 7% of the company’s total output.
Meanwhile, TSMC CFO Wendell Huang said in January 2026 that the company doesn’t plan on producing its “most leading-edge technologies” in the U.S.
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Ultimately, not even Trump’s top aides can say whether or not Trump will move forward with the weapons sale, or if Taiwan’s “Silicon Shield” will aid them in talks with the president.
“President Trump is the only one who knows which way he’s headed in anything that’s this important. That was the way in the first term, and here in the second term. No matter how close advisers are to the president, he makes the calls ultimately because he’s been a leader in negotiations behind the scenes, and he’s been one of the top dealmakers in the country for going on five decades,” Ullyot told the Washington Examiner. “He’s used to playing at this level. He does not need aides to tell him what to do, and only he knows what all the angles are on anything this big. This is the opposite of Joe Biden’s administration, where aides did everything and he was not involved in big decisions like this. This is the opposite of Biden.”