Media reports say US Senator Roger Wicker may visit Taiwan after President William Lai Ching-te cancelled a trip to Latin America.<\/p>\n
Taipei, Taiwan \u2013 A senior United States Republican legislator is reportedly planning a trip to Taiwan, according to media reports, where fears have been growing that US President Donald Trump is losing interest in relations with the democratic, self-ruled island in favour of building ties with China.<\/p>\n
The Financial Times reported on Thursday that US Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi is planning to visit Taiwan in August, citing three people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
Wicker is the Republican chair of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee and \u201cone of Taiwan\u2019s biggest allies in Congress\u201d, according to the report.<\/p>\n
Wicker\u2019s office and the American Institute in Taiwan \u2013 Washington\u2019s de facto embassy in Taipei \u2013 did not immediately reply to Al Jazeera\u2019s request for comment on the reported trip.<\/p>\n
US legislators regularly visit Taiwan, an unofficial ally of Washington, but Wicker\u2019s trip comes at a time of uncertainty for US-Taiwan relations.<\/p>\n
Taiwanese President William Lai Ching-te was reportedly planning to stop in the US next month en route to visiting allies in Latin America, but he cancelled his travel plans after Trump nixed a layover in New York, the Financial Times also reported, citing people familiar with the matter.<\/p>\n
Lai\u2019s office never officially announced the trip, but on Monday, his office said the president had no plans to travel overseas as he focused on typhoon cleanup in southern Taiwan and tariff negotiations with the US.<\/p>\n
The timing of President Lai\u2019s cancelled visit was noted in Taiwan, as it was followed by a separate announcement from Trump that he hoped to visit China at the invitation of President Xi Jinping as Beijing and Washington hammer out a tariff deal.<\/p>\n
Xi, who also heads the Chinese Communist Party, has pledged to annex Taiwan by peace or by force and considers Lai and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to be \u201cseparatists\u201d.<\/p>\n
Beijing objects to visits by Taiwanese leaders to the US, even if they are carried out on an unofficial basis.<\/p>\n
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Experts say it is possible that Wicker\u2019s trip was planned months ago, but the visit could still be used by US legislators to assuage fears that the White House is losing interest in Taiwan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sure many will hope for words of affirmation and commitment to the US-Taiwan relationship, which before would be par for the course, but today will feel extra needed to assure both the DPP and Taiwanese citizens who have a declining view of the United States,\u201d said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University in Taipei.<\/p>\n
Although the US is Taiwan\u2019s security guarantor and has pledged to provide Taipei with the means to defend itself, there are deep currents of scepticism towards the US \u2013 known as yimeilun \u2013 running through Taiwanese society.<\/p>\n
That has grown more prominent since Trump took office last year and said that Taiwan should pay for its own defence, later threatening to slap a 32 percent tariff on Taiwanese exports.<\/p>\n
A survey in April of 1,500 Taiwanese voters by Nachman and others found that just 23.1 percent viewed the US as either a \u201ctrustworthy or very trustworthy\u201d partner, down from 33.6 percent in June 2024 when US President Joe Biden was still in office.<\/p>\n
Liza Tobin, managing director at the geopolitical advisory group Garnaut Global, said the pendulum could swing the other way if Beijing tries to block the trip.<\/p>\n
Trump has granted Beijing a number of concessions already, from access to Nvidia\u2019s H20 chip to failing to grant approval for Lai, said Tobin, who previously served as China Director of the US National Security Council.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnilateral concessions are like catnip for Beijing to push for more concessions, and with the president angling for a trade deal with China and a visit with Xi, China may try to pressure the admin to in turn put pressure on Wicker to cancel the trip,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s hope he doesn\u2019t give in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Media reports say US Senator Roger Wicker may visit Taiwan after President William Lai Ching-te cancelled a trip…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,1204,144,12,4379,3,111,3998,21,19,22,20,25,1209,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-49590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-asia-pacific","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-military","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-politics","15":"tag-taiwan","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-united-states-of-america","18":"tag-unitedstates","19":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","20":"tag-us","21":"tag-us-canada","22":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}