WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Taiwan needs to dramatically hike defense spending to around 10% of gross domestic product in order to deter a war with China, President Donald Trump’s nominee to become a top Pentagon policy advisor said on Tuesday.
Elbridge Colby, the nominee to become under secretary of defense for policy, admonished Taiwan for doing too little now, saying its defense spending was “well below” 3% of GDP.
“They should be more like 10%, or at least something in that ballpark, really focused on their defense. So we need to properly incentivize them,” Colby said at his Senate confirmation hearing.
The remarks come as tensions climb between the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies, which edged deeper into a trade war on Tuesday as China retaliated following steep tariffs imposed by Trump.
China and the United States are also competing for military influence in Asia.
For years, China has been steadily ramping up its military pressure to assert its sovereignty claims over the democratic, self-governed island that is home to a critical chip manufacturing vital to the global economy.
The United States is Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties between Washington and Taipei.
Colby told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Washington had important national security interests in Taiwan, even if the island’s status was not “existential” to the United States.
“Losing Taiwan, Taiwan’s fall, would be a disaster for American interests,” Colby said.
He cautioned the military balance of power between China and the United States had “deteriorated dramatically” in China’s favor. Reversing that trend would be among his top priorities.
“It would be essentially my number one, or one of my very top priorities, if confirmed, to try to get us prepared as quickly as possible, and then over the medium and longer term as well,” Colby said.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has said his government would aim to increase defense spending to 3% of its GDP this year, but the island’s parliament has passed budget cuts that could hit defense outlays. That has triggered concerns in Washington, where officials and lawmakers have regularly said the U.S. cannot show more urgency over Taiwan’s defense than the island itself.
Colby said he was “profoundly disturbed” by the chance that Taiwan could cut its defense spending.
Nonetheless, Taiwan is exploring buying arms worth billions of dollars from the United States, sources briefed on the matter have told Reuters, hoping to win support from the Trump administration as China continues to apply military pressure on the island.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and Michael Martina; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
