an $11bn ($8bn) package of weapons to be sold to Taiwan<\/a>, including advanced rocket launchers and a variety of missiles.<\/p>\nHowever on Friday, Trump said he would be “making decisions” on the sale, adding that he would speak to Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te first. <\/p>\n
“We discussed the Taiwan, you know, the whole thing with the arm sales in great detail,” he said, referring to talks with his Chinese host in Beijing.<\/p>\n
Xi “feels very strongly” about the island and “doesn’t want to see a movement for independence”, Trump said.<\/p>\n
“I made no commitment either way,” Trump added, without elaborating.<\/p>\n
“The Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-US relations,” Xi warned during the talks, according to Chinese state media.<\/p>\n
“If mishandled, the two nations could collide or even come into conflict,” he said.<\/p>\n
Asked if he foresaw a conflict with China over Taiwan, Trump said: “No, I don’t think so. I think we’ll be fine. [Xi] doesn’t want to see a war.”<\/p>\n
He added: “On Taiwan, [Xi] does not want to see a fight for independence because that would be a very strong confrontation, and I heard him out.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t make a comment on it. I heard him out. I had a lot of respect for him.”<\/p>\n
Reporters also asked Trump if the US would defend Taiwan should it come under attack.<\/p>\n
“I don’t want to say that. I’m not going to say that,” Trump said. “There’s only one person that knows that. You know who it is? Me.”<\/p>\n
He continued: “That question was asked to me today by President Xi… He asked me if I’d defend them. I said, ‘I don’t talk about that’.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taiwan is a long-standing US ally and Washington is bound by law to provide the island with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":585759,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-585758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585758"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585758\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/585759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}