Taiwanese are growing increasingly anxious that their island’s interests may be sacrificed as Washington and Beijing stabilize their relationship after the May 2026 Trump-Xi summit in Beijing.
When Donald Trump sat down with Xi Jinping in Beijing last month, it was meant to reset a bilateral relationship battered by two years of tariff warfare and strategic competition. But for Taiwan, the summit has become a source of deepening unease. New survey data and analysis from several leading policy institutes suggest that Taipei is now confronting a grim possibility: that the United States may quietly deprioritize its longstanding commitment to the island’s security in exchange for broader stability with China.
The concern is not abstract. Multiple Trump advisers left the Beijing summit with the impression that a Chinese move on Taiwan was growing more likely, according to sources familiar with the discussions. China dominated the agenda and successfully turned the summit toward its core strategic interests, with Taiwan at the center. For Beijing, the status of Taiwan remains the single most important issue in the US-China relationship, and Xi made sure Trump understood that.
Chatham House released a sharp analysis in late May warning that Trump’s transactional approach to Taiwan could jeopardize its future. “Indo-Pacific allies are taking note,” the analysis read. “The signal Washington sends through its treatment of Taipei reverberates across Tokyo, Seoul, Canberra, and Manila.” If the United States can bargain away Taiwan, the reasoning goes, what stops it from doing the same to other allies?
The summit validated a strategic bet that Beijing has been making for years: that high-level engagement with a transactional American president produces concrete results on Taiwan. Trump showed little appetite for pressing Xi on cross-strait issues, and the joint communique from the summit was carefully worded to avoid any language that might anger Beijing. Taiwan was mentioned in passing, if at all. For Taipei, that silence was deafening.
Global Taiwan research published shortly after the summit concluded that the island’s interests were, at best, sidelined. “Taiwan fared poorly during the Trump-Xi summit,” the analysis stated. “Beijing extracted what it needed: recognition from Washington that Taiwan is a matter of core Chinese interest, not a bargaining chip.” The sense in Taipei is that the United States blinked first and that Taiwan paid the price.
The deeper fear is structural. Trump’s approach to foreign policy has always been personal and deal-oriented. He prizes face-to-face agreements and measurable outcomes. Taiwan, which lacks formal diplomatic relations with the United States and relies on customary rather than treaty-based assurances, is especially vulnerable in such a framework. Observers say Taipei fears that Trump, presented with a sufficiently attractive offer from Xi, could overturn decades of bipartisan US support for the island.
The implications extend beyond Taiwan itself. Southeast Asian nations and Japan are watching the Trump-Xi dynamic with growing alarm. If the United States can be convinced to accommodate Chinese territorial ambitions in exchange for trade concessions or cooperation on other issues, the entire architecture of the Indo-Pacific alliance system comes into question. The Trump administration has offered public reassurances, but they ring hollow to allies who saw what happened in Beijing.
There is also a domestic political dimension. Trump’s base has little appetite for foreign entanglements, and the president has frequently questioned the value of defending faraway islands. His “America First” worldview does not naturally extend to a security guarantee for Taiwan, and the summit showed that he is willing to let Beijing set the terms on the issues that matter most to China.
The months ahead will be telling. If Washington moderates its arms sales to Taiwan, reduces high-level official contacts, or softens its rhetoric on cross-strait stability, the fears expressed in Taipei will be confirmed. If Trump reverts to a harder line, the current anxiety may prove premature. But the summit changed something fundamental. It showed that Beijing now has a pathway to influence US policy on Taiwan through direct presidential engagement. That is a weapon Xi will not hesitate to use again.
For Taiwan, the question is no longer whether the United States will defend it. The question is whether the United States will remember it at all.