Here's why Taiwan is watching the U.S. election closely

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Buildings at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. campus in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on July 16. / Bloomberg via Getty Images

TAIPEI, Taiwan — As the U.S. presidential candidates lay out their visions for the country over the next four years, Taiwan is also pondering what impact American policy will have on its future.

Just about 100 miles to the west of Taiwan is China, which claims the small Asian island as its own and has repeatedly threatened to invade it.

Because Taiwan is not officially considered a sovereign nation by most other countries and does not have the ability to conduct normal diplomacy, its current partnership with the U.S. — which dates back to 1979 — has outsize importance for the island.

Here's what Taiwan is looking out for in the U.S. election.

Taiwan is looking for security guarantees

While the U.S. adheres to what it calls “strategic ambiguity” over Taiwan, it is bound by American legislation to help the island’s self-defense. In recent years, Washington has increased large sales of U.S. weapons systems to Taipei.

As rhetoric heats up over whether the U.S. should defend Taiwan in case of a Chinese invasion, there is also growing skepticism in Taiwan over U.S. reliability as a security partner.

A recent survey conducted by the Brookings Institution in Taiwan found only about a quarter of 1,500 adults polled thought the U.S. was a trustworthy ally, though about 55% said they believed the U.S. would come to Taiwan’s aid in the event of a conflict, no matter who is elected U.S. president.

In Taiwan, the sense of confusion and nervousness is palpable, as Beijing ramps up its intimidation.

“What they care about is whether the U.S. has a very explicit commitment to Taiwan's defense, which means [will] the U.S. militarily intervene, instead of just sending signals to Beijing or just sending weapons, arms to Taiwan? People really want to know whether the U.S. Navy or marine forces will help Taiwan to defend itself,” says Ping-Kuei Chen, a professor of diplomacy at National Chengchi University in Taipei.

Taiwan wants to protect its dominance in semiconductor technology

Taiwan is home to dozens of multinational technological manufacturing and semiconductor giants, including TSMC. Its chip industry is now so advanced and critical to the global economy that analysts have nicknamed it a “silicon shield” that protects the island due to its economic importance. This year, Taiwan is expected to manufacture nearly $150 billion worth of semiconductor chips that are critical to smartphones and fighter jets alike.

Taiwan is highly attuned to how the next American president will continue to manage a technological rivalry with China, which has resulted in a raft of strict U.S. semiconductor export controls that have put Taiwanese chipmakers in a bind.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. has subsidized new semiconductor facilities in the U.S. at unprecedented levels. Taiwan’s TSMC, arguably the world’s most advanced semiconductor manufacturer, is now setting up three new factories in Arizona to take advantage of U.S. subsidies and tax breaks.

The investment has been controversial in Taiwan, where some Taiwanese commentators have suggested that the U.S. is working to weaken Taiwan's computer chip industry by shifting production out of Taiwan. One popular misinformation narrative circulating online even claimed that the U.S. was out to destroy Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC. There was no evidence for either claim.

Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump has suggested he would pursue retaliatory measures against Taiwan’s semiconductor sector. “They took all of our chip business,” the Republican presidential hopeful said last month.

Taiwan is looking for a stable political partner

In 2016, support in Taiwan for the U.S. Republican Party surged after Trump broke with precedent and took a call from Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ying-wen shortly after he was elected U.S. president. The call broke precedent because the U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and previous American presidents avoided such public, direct contact for fear of angering China.  

However, recent comments from the Trump campaign about Taiwan have eroded that support, says Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University.

“You know, we're no different than an insurance company,” Trump told Bloomberg Businessweek last month. “Taiwan doesn't give us anything,” he said, going on to suggest that Taiwan pay the U.S. for defense.

State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller pointed out that Taiwan does pay for millions of dollars of U.S.-made arms a year. Taiwan’s premier Cho Jung-tai pushed back against Trump’s assertions, saying last month that Taiwan was “willing” to shoulder more on defense.

In the recent Brookings survey, conducted shortly before Biden dropped out of the presidential race, researchers found more respondents supported Biden over Trump.

Yet the greatest share of respondents — about 57% — said they “did not know” or had “no opinion” about who the next U.S. president should be, suggesting ambivalence about both parties’ policies on Taiwan.

Harris has indicated she will largely keep Biden’s foreign policy positions on China, including pushing back on its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

“We can interpret our results as people being like, both Republican and Democratic administration seem to do stuff that is good for Taiwan, so we will take either one,” says Nachman, one of the authors of the Brookings survey.