Did US pressure before Xi-Trump summit force KMT hand on Taiwan’s defence budget?

Taiwan’s main opposition parties have cleared special defence budget bill after months of fractious debate and infighting Pressure from Washington was likely to have played a decisive role in Taiwan’s opposition parties backing a sharply expanded special defence budget last week, analysts said, as concerns mount in Taipei ahead of a summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. The agreed amount was far above the “NT$380 billion plus N” framework previously favoured by the main opposition party Kuomintang, but still well short of the government’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion package. The bill was jointly pushed through by the KMT and the smaller opposition Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), which together hold a legislative majority. The scaled-down package covers US arms sales to Taiwan, but excludes many locally produced weapons and military-industrial programmes championed by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, including drones, AI-enabled battlefield systems and indigenous missile projects.

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