The Biden administration is preparing to provide Taiwan with $567 in military aid as the US continues to ignore China’s red lines related to the island, Defense News reported on Friday.
The weapons package is in the final stages and will be provided through the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which allows the US to ship weapons to other countries directly from US military stockpiles.
The military aid will be the largest PDA package that the US has provided Taiwan. Since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 as part of a normalization deal with Beijing, the US has always sold weapons to Taiwan but never financed the purchases or provided the arms free of charge until last year.
In 2023, the US gave Taiwan a $345 million arms package using the PDA and provided $80 million in Foreign Military Financing (FMF), a State Department program that gives foreign governments money to purchase US arms.
The Defense News report said the new $567 million package has been approved by the Pentagon and is awaiting President Biden’s signature. He’s expected to sign it before the 2024 Fiscal Year ends on September 30.
Congress has authorized the provision of $1 billion in PDA for Taiwan each year, and the $95 billion foreign military aid bill Biden signed in April included $1.9 billion that could be used to replenish weapons sent to Taiwan.
The new form of US support for Taiwan has infuriated Chinese officials, who frequently warn the US that the issue is the “first red line” in US-China relations that must not be crossed.
When President Biden signed the foreign military aid bill in April, Beijing warned that new military aid for Taiwan will make a conflict more likely.
“I would like to stress that getting closer militarily between the United States and the Taiwan region will not make the latter safer or save ‘Taiwan independence’ from doom. It will only heighten tensions and the risk of conflict and confrontation in the Taiwan Strait, and will eventually backfire,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.
