Press Note:
USTBC President Offers Follow-up Comments Examining Data on Taiwan Arms Sales

(Arlington, Virginia, September 20, 2024)

On September 17, the US-Taiwan Business Council issued a press release about the proposed Foreign Military Sale (FMS) of return, repair, and reshipment of spare parts and related equipment to Taiwan. Council President Rupert Hammond-Chambers today offered these follow-up comments:

Since 2017, the United States is supposed to be in a period of growing seriousness about the threat to Taiwan. The government rhetoric certainly fits that mounting concern, but how about the numbers?

Here are the gross arms sales values for successive administrations since 1993:

Clinton (January 20, 1993-January 20, 2001)	US$8.702 billion (2 terms)
Bush (January 20, 2001-January 20, 2009)	US$15.614 billion (2 terms)
Obama (January 20, 2009-January 20, 2017)	US$13.962 billion (2 terms)
Trump (January 20, 2017-January 20, 2021)	US$18.278 billion (1 term)
Biden (January 20, 2021-Present)	US$5.709 billion (1 term)

 

Additionally, for President Biden’s administration the dollar amount of security assistance provided has fallen each year since 2022.

2021	US$0.75 billion (1 notification) This program would mostly have been processed by the Trump Administration.
2022	US$2.14 billion (10 notifications) These sales reflect the first that the Biden Administration would have greenlit and processed.
2023	US$1.86 billion (5 notifications)
2024	US$0.96 billion (6 notifications)

 

Over the next 12-18 months, Taiwan’s ‘backlog’ of weapons — comprising so much of the well-publicized US$20 billion in ordered weapons — will be delivered. The amount of remaining backlog is already falling rapidly.

Then what? Arms sales and their dollar figures are not the only metric that we use to measure U.S. support for Taiwan’s defense, but they are an important one and can show the strength of that support.

As the numbers note, and as USTBC’s analysis has consistently stated, U.S. support for Taiwan’s material force modernization has been waning since 2021. It now sits at its lowest point since 2001, bar the Obama Administration’s 4+ year arms sales freeze from 2011-2015, and it is continuing to fall.

It is unclear why the Biden Administration is steadily reducing the value of arms sales to Taiwan.

Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) and Foreign Military Financing (FMF) are important new factors in material support, but they should be adding to the flow and not substituting for it.

Since 2001, there has been only one reason that administrations, specifically the Bush and Obama administrations, have manipulated arms sales to Taiwan; consideration of China’s response has impacted the timing, type, and volume of weapons sold to Taiwan. These administrations took the view that if material support for Taiwan was curbed, this would encourage China to soften or change aspects of its behavior. That never happened.

Additional Data:

For more details on Taiwan arms sales, please visit our dedicated defense website at www.ustaiwandefense.com. The post “Taiwan Arms Sales Notified to Congress 1990-2024” contains charts showing a summary of arms sales data by year, along with a link to the raw data compiled by the Council from DSCA and other sources.