Yui presses Trump to speed stalled 14 billion dollar Taiwan arms package

Taiwan representative to the United States Alexander Yui said he remains confident that President Donald Trump will ultimately approve a long-delayed arms package worth about 14 billion U.S. dollars, while urging Washington to move faster, Central News Agency reported on 5 October 2026 from his Bloomberg Television interview.

Yui told Bloomberg This Weekend that the speed could be a little faster, but that the United States understands the threat Taiwan faces and will provide necessary equipment, according to CNA and Liberty Times accounts of the interview conducted in Washington.

People familiar with the matter said air-defence systems make up a substantial share of the proposed package. A senior U.S. administration official, speaking anonymously about internal deliberations, said Trump would decide on the package in a fairly short time without giving a public timetable, The Straits Times reported in its Bloomberg dispatch.

Yui said Washington has been clear that U.S. policy toward Taiwan has not changed, and that the United States has not accepted or answered Chinese leader Xi Jinping's call for an explicit U.S. opposition to Taiwanese independence, which would go beyond the longstanding U.S. stance of not supporting independence.

With Trump and Xi expected to meet again at international summits later this year, Yui said Taiwan's goal is to ensure the island is not on the menu of U.S.-China bargaining. Public Television Service reported that he also linked the interview to delivery pace for F-16V Block 70 fighters already in production, saying aircraft would arrive as they are completed but that speed could still improve.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Taiwan remains a very important partner and attributed the latest package delay in part to Middle East developments, according to the Bloomberg account carried by CNA and The Straits Times. After U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said Trump had asked Xi about buying American weapons, the State Department reiterated that U.S. law bars arms sales to China and that there is no plan to sell weapons to Beijing.

Defense Mirror's 5 October wrap of the same Bloomberg reporting noted that senators pressed in May for formal congressional notification of the pending package, and that Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution expects further sales, possibly in smaller tranches after planned Trump-Xi meetings around APEC and the G20.

Yui's public remarks on 4 and 5 October keep the stalled 14 billion dollar package in the open after the Trump-Xi Washington meeting, framing delivery speed and air-defence content as immediate self-defence needs rather than a bargaining chip between Washington and Beijing.