How do US arms sales to Taiwan work and why are they such a sore point for China?

By Brad Lendon, CNN

(CNN) — After US President Donald Trump’s summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping earlier this month, much focus has been put on Washington’s support for Taiwan and US arms sales to its government.

On the first day of those talks Xi delivered a stark warning to his US counterpart – that Taiwan, the most important outstanding issue between the US and China, could become a “very dangerous situation” if mishandled.

Trump has delayed signing a $14 billion arms deal for Taiwan that was recently approved by Congress, calling it a “very good negotiating chip” in his dealings with Xi.

Meanwhile, acting US Navy Secretary Hung Cao said the deal was being delayed as the Pentagon made sure it has enough weapons for the war with Iran.

But Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said last week it has not been notified by the US of any delay in arms sales.

With the confusion and conflicting statements around the issue, here’s a look at the process and law regarding US military sales to Taiwan, the democratically governed island of 23 million that Beijing claims to be its own.

Xi has not ruled out the use of force to one day gain control of Taiwan.

The law

The US is bound by an act of Congress to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.

In 1979, US President Jimmy Carter’s administration switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei — whose government was and still is formally called the Republic of China (ROC) — to Beijing, known as the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The move ended a mutual defense treaty between Washington and Taipei, much to the dismay at the time of the US Congress, which quickly passed the Taiwan Relations Act to assert its role in relations across the Taiwan Strait.

Congress thought Carter made a “bad bargain,” according to the Brookings Institution think tank.

“They felt that by giving into Chinese demands that he terminate diplomatic relations with Taiwan and end the mutual defense treaty, Carter had left the island profoundly vulnerable,” Brookings says.

The Taiwan Relations Act states that the future of Taiwan must be decided by “peaceful means” and that the US “shall provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” that will enable it to “maintain a sufficient self-defense capacity.

Last week, chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said “Our Taiwan policy remains unchanged, and the US continues to adhere to long-standing commitments consistent with the Taiwan Relations Act.”

While a US-China joint communique issued in 1982 mentioned Washington’s intention of a gradual and eventual reduction in its arms sales to Taiwan pending a peaceful resolution, Beijing has interpreted the text as a binding commitment while US officials have long disputed the notion — stressing that Washington had never agreed to set a date for ending such sales nor would it consult Beijing beforehand

The weapons pipeline

Since 1979, Taiwan has purchased tens of billions of dollars in US military systems, from big-ticket items like destroyers, frigates, jet fighters and main battle tanks, to smaller items like anti-aircraft, anti-tank missiles, computer systems and logistical support.

But few have made it to the island quickly.

“It is not unusual for defense sales to take years to complete, sometimes never actually meeting full delivery,” said Jeff Abramson, senior non-resident fellow at the Center for International Policy (CIP).

“Typically, arms are not already manufactured when they are first sold, but are instead orders and the timing of their delivery can depend on industrial capacity, US military needs for those weapons that might take preference, others who might be in line as higher priority to receive them, or simply changed situations between order and delivery,” he said.

Taiwan waited 81 months for tanks

In Taiwan’s case, that’s resulted in a significant backlog of almost $30 billion in weapons still to be delivered, according to an April 2026 report from the Taiwan Security Monitor (TSM) project at George Mason University.

Joe O’Connor, assistant director at TSM, detailed some deals that have been completed this year or are still delayed after years.

An order for 291 small ALTIUS-600M loitering munitions made in 2024 was completed in 21 months, while an order for 108 Abrams tanks made in 2019 took 81 months to fulfill, with the final units only reaching Taiwan last month, he said.

And Taipei is still waiting for F-16 fighter jets ordered in 2019 to be delivered, with production and flight testing only recently begun, O’Connor said.

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said as of this April, among the 23 major US arm sales over the last decade, five of them have been fully delivered. Three are partially delivered, and the remaining 15 items are still under production.

Among the weapons systems delivered in the last decade are TOW-2B and Javelin missiles, main battle tanks, Phalanx naval defense systems and fuel tankers.

Inside Taiwan there has been growing debate in recent years on whether the island’s military procurement has overly focused on expensive, big-ticket items that take too many years to produce and could be vulnerable against China’s much larger and better-equipped military.

Many have instead pushed a so-called “porcupine strategy” where Taiwan embraces cheap and easy-to-produce asymmetric weaponry designed and developed locally, such as drones and anti-ship missiles.

Domestic production of asymmetric weaponry could be a possible solution for Taipei, as the TSM reports that the arms delivery backlog is almost evenly split between asymmetric and traditional weaponry.

Raymond Greene, the de facto US ambassador to Taiwan, has previously stated that there has been a “misperception” about the amount of delays, and that the “vast majority” of current delays are related to the F-16V program.

The effects of Trump’s delayed signing

It’s that varied – and extended – delivery record that has analysts saying that Trump’s delay in signing the recent $14 billion deal has little impact of Taiwan’s military readiness.

That deal appeared to be focused on air defenses and drone countermeasures, with systems like Patriot missiles and the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems included.

Those are highly valued systems, not only for the US military, but also its allies and partners around the world, and Trump’s delay could mean Taiwan’s order gets pushed down in the queue, O’Connor said.

The war with Iran has resulted in the US, Israel and many US allies in the Gulf burning through significant quantities of their own expensive anti-air missile batteries – often against comparative inexpensive Iranian drones – and those stockpiles will also need to be refilled.

But Patriot delivery was likely years away in any case. Analysts say it’s a bellwether of a crisis in US arms production affecting all customers.

The advanced PAC-3 MSE interceptors require 24 months production lead time for the missile and 30 months its solid rocket motor, according to a paper from the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

“Such timelines are due to physical industrial constraints, such as the lengthy curing time required for solid rocket motors and the complex, multi-year process of qualifying any new component supplier,” the paper says.

That means even if Trump approved the deal today, Taiwan would not be fielding the new Patriots until 2028 at the earliest.

“Even an emergency response moves at a pace that is strategically irrelevant in the short term,” the FPRI paper says.

Creating problems in planning

O’Connor says the area where a signing delay can cause more immediate problems is in force planning, where expected arms purchases are built into reform and modernization efforts.

He also notes that any delay in new arms orders doesn’t affect those already under contract, which “appear to be ongoing regardless of a pause in future sales.”

Of course, that could change at any time. As the acting Navy secretary noted in the congressional hearing, the US needs to replenish arms stockpiles drawn down by the Iran war. Taiwan would take a back seat to that.

Abramson, at the CIP, says situations that dictate the importance of any arms package change over time.

“As with almost all situations, other activities to defuse the situation will have more impact than the provision of arms,” he said.

CNN’s Wayne Chang contributed to this report.

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