Trump suspends $14 billion arms sales to Taiwan, Anduril says business is blocked: Taiwan's security commitment into the summit deal shadow

Palmer Luckey, founder of U.S. defense technology company Anduril, said on September 19 in Taipei that the Trump administration’s delay in approving an arms sale plan of up to $14 billion to Taiwan has affected Anduril’s business advancement in Taiwan.

After Trump visited Beijing in May and met with Xi Jinping this year, he publicly said the delay in arms sales to Taiwan and described the arms sales package still to be approved as a "good code" for negotiations with Beijing.

* Companies for the first time publicly say the cost of "waiting for approval"

Luckey made the statement during Taipei’s participation in the “International Forum on Social Defense Resilience.” He did not disclose which specific contracts Anduril was stuck in, but said that if the $14 billion plan could be pushed forward, the company’s business in Taiwan would be “in different positions.”

Anduril has become one of the major U.S. suppliers for Taiwan’s drone procurement in recent years. Taiwan has already used the company’s Altius drone; Taiwan also unveiled a Barracuda-500 low-cost autonomous cruise missile co-developed with Anduril last year. Drones and decentralized precision strike systems are being incorporated into Taipei’s military modernization program.

This makes the approval of arms sales no longer just a diplomatic signal between governments, but also directly into enterprise capacity arrangements, supply chain construction and investment decisions in Taiwan.U.S. military-industrial enterprises can develop products in advance, find local partners, but involve arms exports to Taiwan, and ultimately still have to go through the U.S. government's export and arms sale approval procedures.

Trump calls arms sales “coding”, while Beijing continues to pressure to stop arms sales to Taiwan

The Chinese government has long opposed U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and has repeatedly imposed sanctions on U.S. military-industrial enterprises and executives participating in related projects such as the Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law.Luckey himself was also included in Beijing’s sanctions in December last year.Beijing claims Taiwan belongs to China, believing that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan violate the one-China principle and Sino-US political documents it understands.

The United States, according to the Taiwan Relations Law and other domestic laws,ins the policy framework for providing defensive equipment to Taiwan, but the previous government has a larger administrative discretion on specific equipment, scale and approval time.

This approach has raised concerns among Taiwan, Japan, and some members of the U.S. Congress.After interviews with several regional officials and analysts this week, Reuters that Asian allies and partners were concerned that Trump might adjust or delay security cooperation on the Taiwan issue in exchange for trade, rare-earth or other economic concessions.

Rare land becomes another level of real cost of arms sales decisions

In Taipei, Luckey acknowledged that the U.S. government is not only facing a variable in Taiwan’s security, he said the White House will also receive assessments about China’s potential counter-reaction measures such as the use of rare earth supplies, while rare earth is critical to the U.S. technology and defense industries.

This reveals the intersectional structure of the current US-China negotiations: Taiwan arms sales, key minerals, tariffs and high-tech exports are not separate policy drawers.China has a significant share of the global rare-earth processing and magnetic supply chain, while the United States has a number of restrictive tools against China such as advanced semiconductors, software and military technology.When the two sides connect these tools, the decision to sell arms that originally served as a long-term security plan may be affected by the pace of short-term economic and trade negotiations.

For Anduril, this means that business plans are subjected to diplomatic uncertainty; for Taiwan, the issue is more direct – equipment already included in defense planning will be involved if long awaited by U.S. administrative approval, procurement timetables, training cycles and local supporting industries.

Taiwan accelerates joint drone and missile exercises

Just a day before Luckey spoke publicly about the delay in arms sales, the Taiwanese military held the first joint combat exercise in Shandong County to combine multi-attack drones with traditional missile systems. Taiwanese President Ray Chand said the unmanned weapons and traditional weapons synergy reflected modern warfare changes. The exercises also included air defense, anti-ship and anti-landing missiles, follow-up exercises are scheduled to be integrated into the U.S.-made HIMARS rocket system and the Tiger missile simulator.

Together, the two newspapers present two aspects of Taiwan’s current defense policy: on the one hand, Taipei is further integrating the concepts of drones, missiles and decentralized combat into training; on the other hand, a considerable part of the capabilities still rely on U.S. political approval and arms supply chains.

Next step in arms sales depends on the White House, not suppliers

As of September 19, the White House had not yet publicly responded to Luckey’s latest statements.The $14 billion plan has not yet been finally approved.Anduril can publicly explain the commercial implications but can not decide when to resume approvals; the Taiwanese government can advance budgets and training and can not complete the arms sales license for the U.S. administration.

Therefore, the controversy is not whether a military-industrial enterprise loses orders, but how U.S. security policies deal with the conflict between “long-term commitments” and “Summit negotiation codes” under the Trump administration. If arms sales continue to be postponed, the impact will be transmitted along the approval chain to suppliers, delivery plans, Taiwan procurement and training; if the summit is released quickly, it will show that Washington uses more delays as a phased negotiation tool.

Before Xi Jinping's visit to the United States, Anduril made the cost of waiting public, and also made Taiwan's arms sales specifically presented for the first time in the form of blocked enterprise business.