Around 25 US defense contractors plan to send representatives to Taiwan next month, marking the first time the arms industry will send a delegation to the island since 2019, Nikkei Asia reported on Tuesday.
Rupert Hammond-Chambers, president of the US Taiwan Business Council, said the delegation will look to boost cooperation with Taiwan’s industry and wants to explore jointly producing weapons. The arms that Taipei is interested in producing include drones and ammunition.
The planned arms industry trip to Taiwan comes as the US is looking to ramp up arms sales and general military cooperation with Taiwan, which will further exacerbate tensions with Beijing.
The delegation plans to meet with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, who recently provoked major Chinese military drills by meeting with US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in California.
When asked about the prospect of US companies jointly producing arms with Taiwan, a Biden administration official expressed support for the idea. “From a very high-level perspective, we think that co-production arrangements make sense, but we need to take a look at them on a case-by-case basis, and it has to be at the request of US industry,” the official told Nikkei.
Since Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979, the US has always sold weapons to Taiwan. But the US is now looking to expand support by providing billions in military aid included in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Some of the Taiwan aid has hit a snag with the appropriations committees, but the Pentagon has said it plans to use the $1 billion in Presidential Drawdown Authority to start arming Taiwan. The authority is what President Biden has been using to arm Ukraine by sending weapons directly from US military stockpiles.
This is a tremendous relief to me!… 1 BILLION BUCKS to arm Taiwan!
Way to go guys.
So now, we are pissing off not only Russia but China as well.
Is there a world war in the making emerging here?
Inhale/Exhale. More peace pot please.
it says billion$ – plural
WAR IS PEACE
I wonder if I went to the Biden administration and told them that China is threatening to attack my home? I wonder how many millions of dollars in military hardware they would give me?
I imagine I could find something useful to do with an F-35.
Or an Abrams tank.
the US is now looking to expand support by providing billions in military aid (to Taiwan) included in the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)
americans are well down the ‘taxation without representation’ road – even past the point of no return. wasn’t ‘taxation without representation’ the reason for the american revolution? and then the southern states had to actually issue their own currency resulting in the civil war? what will it take to stop this BS from continuing.
No Medicare for all. No making Social Security solvent for 100 years. Just NO for the good.
it is always NO for anything good
We’ve outsourced our chip production to them so why not a few weapon factories?
There are 3 year old Taiwanese weapons contracts unfilled but the military industrial complex sees expansion opportunities in Taiwan.
China, China and China, will love this.
Man, we keep doing our best to get uglier and uglier. What a hateful mob we have become.