The United States and China, who declared a temporary truce in their trade war during their meeting in Busan on the sidelines of the October Gyeongju APEC, clashed head-on again just over a month later. The spark for this conflict is the Taiwan issue, a powder keg in Sino-U.S. relations. After the Trump administration approved the largest-ever arms sale to Taiwan, China retaliated by imposing sanctions on a slew of U.S. defense companies, escalating into a “strength-against-strength” confrontation. Analysis suggests both nations are employing a precarious “brinkmanship strategy” to gain the upper hand at the negotiation table ahead of President Trump’s planned visit to Beijing in April of next year.
The arms sale to Taiwan, approved by the Trump administration on the 18th (local time), is evaluated as having touched the “reverse scale” of China in both scale and content. The sale alone amounts to $11.1054 billion (approximately 16.04 trillion Korean won). This surpasses the record set in 2019 during Trump’s first term, when F-16 fighter jets worth $8 billion were sold.
The weapons sold are not merely defensive. They include offensive systems such as the HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System), which changed the dynamics of the Ukraine war, and self-destructing drones like the Altius-600·700M, which penetrate de
ep into enemy territory to strike.China’s counterattack was immediate and specific. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on the 26th, stating, “The U.S. has crossed the red line of the ‘One-China Principle,’” and announced sanctions against 20 U.S. defense companies and 10 executives. The sanctioned list includes Northrop Grumman, which manufactures stealth bombers, Boeing’s defense division in Saint Louis, as well as Anduril Industries—a U.S. “defense unicorn”—and its founder Palmer Luckey. The measures include freezing assets within China and a complete ban on transactions. Foreign media, including AP, analyzed that this is a “strong warning message that ‘if you provoke China, you will definitely pay a price,’” rather than causing substantial economic damage.
Diplomatic circles view this clash not as a simple accidental incident but as a highly calculated power struggle. For President Trump, the U.S. midterm elections scheduled for November of next year are an urgent issue. To retain congressional power, he must continuously project the image of a “president strong on China” to voters. Simultaneously, ahead of his planned visit to Beijing in April of next year, the “art of the deal” is at play, using the Taiwan issue as leverage to extract trade surplus expansion or economic concessions from China. By citing the U.S. domestic law, the Taiwan Relations Act, as justification for the arms sale, the strategy aims to secure both practical benefits (money) and reputation (security).
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