Trump offered to sell weapons to China, according to US ambassador

“President Trump keeps saying:

‘Hey, we sell weapons to other countries in the world,’” Perdue said on “Fox News Sunday” when discussing Xi’s state visit to Washington last week.

“He even asked President Xi if he would like to buy some at one point.”

Perdue did not elaborate or reveal Xi’s response.

The admission that the American president offered to sell weapons to China is extraordinary.

Most American policymakers and legislators of both parties consider the nation governed by the Communist Party as the greatest military, economic and diplomatic rival of the United States; the only real challenge to the United States as a superpower.

When asked about it, the White Housethrough a US official, stated that the United States has no plans to sell weapons to China.

The State Department stated in a statement that “U.S. law prohibits the sale of weapons to China, and there is no offer or plan to sell weapons to that country.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

China has the world’s fastest-growing military, and for decades, U.S. officials in administrations, including the current one, have warned of a possible military confrontation between the two nuclear powers in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly over the island of Taiwan or China’s aggressive actions in territories claimed by U.S. allies in the South and East China Seas.

According to US officials, Chinese defense companies, with the approval of the Chinese government, are supporting US adversaries, such as Iran and Russiathrough the sale of dual-use equipment and satellite images, in addition to planning the secret export of weapons.

The United States has imposed sanctions on some Chinese companies.

The United States has been the dominant military power in the Asia-Pacific region, but its might is weakening compared to China’s, especially as the Trump administration diverts resources from the region to its war against Iran.

In recent years, the U.S. defense industry has also struggled to produce weapons systems at a rate that U.S. officials consider sufficient to meet global needs.

“If there was any ambiguity about whether President Trump considers China a threat for security, this revelation from @USAmbChina Perdue dispels any doubt,” Ryan Hass, a former career diplomat and White House national security official who is director of the China center at the Brookings Institution, wrote on social media.

“Trump’s offer to sell weapons to China will be unsettling for American partners who are on the front lines of the Chinese offensive,” he added.

Among those partners are Philippines, Japan and Taiwanthe de facto independent and democratic island that the Chinese Communist Party aspires to govern.

Trump has been holding up a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwandespite the fact that the US government has been obliged by law since 1979 to send defensive weapons to the island.

The latest weapons package was put together by State Department officials and approved by congressional leaders earlier this year, but has since remained stalled at the department, it was reported. The New York Times.

In May, several senators sent a bipartisan letter to Trump urging him to move forward with the sale.

On Wednesday, hours before Xi’s arrival in Washington, four Republican senators, led by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, sent a letter to the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth requesting the same.

They also pressured the two men to allocate $300 million in arms purchase aid that Congress had already approved for Taiwan, as well as $1 billion for the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative, a U.S. defense program.

When an interviewer Fox News Asked Perdue on Sunday about widespread concern about withholding arms sales and military aid to Taiwan, Perdue noted that Trump had approved $11 billion in arms sales to Taiwan last year.

“There are ongoing talks about other sales. He and President Xi talk about it every time they meet.”

That’s when Perdue claimed that Trump had argued that the United States sells weapons to “other people in the world” and that he had offered such sales to Xi.

China has claimed that Xi has told Trump that he opposes the United States selling weapons to Taiwan.

In May, after a summit in Beijing with Xi, Trump told reporters that he had spoken with him about arms sales to Taiwan “in great detail.”

These conversations—the existence of which Perdue highlighted in his statements on Sunday—constitute a violation of a 1982 document in which the United States agreed to extend its support to Taiwan; one of the assurances stipulated that Washington “had not agreed to consult” with China on arms sales to Taiwan.

When asked in May about that commitment, Trump responded:

“Well, I think the 1980s are a long way away. It’s a huge distance.”

In an interview with Fox News recorded in May while in Beijing, Trump said he was stopping arms sales to Taiwan because it was a “very good negotiating asset” with China.

After last week’s summit, Trump said he and Xi did not talk much about Taiwan.

“For now, everything is fine,” he said.

“It’s just moving forward.”

On Sunday, Alexander Yui, Taiwan’s de facto ambassador to the United States, declared on the program “Face the Nation” of CBS News that, based on public statements by government officials last week, it was confident that “Taiwan’s stance toward the United States has not changed.”

He added, however, that he hoped Taiwan would receive the withheld arms package, valued at $14 billion, “as soon as possible”.

On Wednesday, journalists in New York asked Rubio about withholding the arms package from Taiwan.

Rubio stated that the sale was being reviewed in light of the need to “balance our industrial capacity and our military-industrial base” and to determine whether the United States needed the weapons for itself.

It’s unclear how Trump’s offer to sell weapons to China is compatible with that reasoning.

Trump declared last week that he would meet Xi again in China in November, during a regional leaders’ summit, and that the Chinese leader would return to the United States in December, also for a multilateral summit.

Analysts consider it unlikely that Trump will approve arms sales to Taiwan before the end of the year, for fear of upsetting Xi before such meetings.

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