The US House of Representatives Appropriations Committee on Monday introduced a bill which would provide US$500 million in foreign military financing for Taiwan to bolster deterrence across the Taiwan Strait.
The Fiscal Year 2025 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Bill would also offer Taiwan up to US$2 billion in loans and loan guarantees for the same purpose, the committee said.
Other efforts to curb the influence of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) found in the bill include providing US$2.1 billion for US national security interests in the Indo-Pacific region, as well as US$400 million in funding for the Countering PRC Influence Fund.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Appropriations Committee chairman Tom Cole of the Republican Party said the bill “sends a clear message that the United States will do what’s necessary to protect our interests.”
The bill is scheduled to be reviewed by the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Subcommittee on Tuesday, but still has several hurdles to clear before it can become law.
The chairman of the subcommittee, Mario Diaz-Balart, also a Republican, said the proposed legislation would continue to advance global freedom and show strong solidarity with US allies.
It is aimed at “upholding key US priorities such as supporting strategic allies like Israel and Taiwan, and countering adversaries such as communist China, the terrorist states of Iran and Cuba, and terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah,” he said.
In other news, Steven Rudder, a retired US Marine Corps officer, and representatives of 27 US defense contractors have arrived in Taiwan to meet with President William Lai (賴清德) and attend a forum to increase cooperation on defense technologies.
The group of defense industry representatives and Rudder arrived in Taiwan late on Monday to attend the Taiwan-US Defense Industry Forum to be held tomorrow, a source familiar with the matter said.
Aside from attending the half-day forum, the delegation would also visit Taiwan’s top military research unit, the Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology, and its chief aerospace company, Aerospace Industrial Development Corp (漢翔航空), to discuss potential cooperation on uncrewed aerial vehicles and defense technologies, the source said.
Organized by the Taipei-based Taiwan Defense Industry Development Association and the Arlington, Texas-based US-Taiwan Business Council, the forum is to feature addresses by representatives of the association and council, as well as by Rudder, the source said.
Rudder is a nonresident senior fellow in the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.
He retired as the commanding general of Marine Forces Pacific in September 2022 after leading an organization of 80,000 people responsible for all US Marine operations in the Asia-Pacific region, according to his Atlantic Council biography.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Chen Yeong-kang (陳永康), a retired navy admiral, is also to give a keynote address during the forum at the Taipei International Convention Center, which is to be attended by experts and representatives from defense companies.
Some of the topics to be touched on would be Taiwan’s domestic warship and warplane projects, and advanced defense technologies and drones, according to a tentative itinerary released by its organizers.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm named Trami at 2am yesterday, and is projected to move west-northwest toward waters east of Luzon Island, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 8am, Trami’s center was 700km east of Manila, or 1,180km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost tip, moving in a northwesterly direction. It was carrying maximum sustained winds of 65kph, with gusts of up to 90kph, CWA data showed. The weather agency forecast the center of the storm would be over waters 470km east-northeast of Manila or 820km southeast of Oluanpi at 8am today, and urged ships
Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) yesterday temporarily shut down the nation’s nuclear energy generation as the state-run utility started regular maintenance on the remaining reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant for 41 days. The No. 2 reactor of the nation’s only active nuclear plant in Pingtung County’s Hengchun Township (恆春) is set to be decommissioned next year. The No. 1 reactor has been offline since July. The shutdown is to perform equipment maintenance and fuel replacement in preparation for the power plant’s next operating cycle, Taipower said in a statement. With support from other energy sources, Taipower would ensure sufficient power supply
TROUBLED WATERS: The ministers also said they opposed China’s obstruction of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea and the militarization of disputed features G7 defense ministers in a joint statement on Saturday singled out China over a number of concerns, including its “provocative actions” near Taiwan. The defense ministers of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US gathered in Naples, Italy, from Friday to yesterday for the group’s first ministerial meeting dedicated to defense. In the joint declaration, they stressed “enduring unity and common determination to address, in a cohesive and concrete manner, security challenges, at a time in history marked by great instability.” In addition to voicing support for Ukraine, expressing concern about the escalating conflict in the Middle East and condemning
BIGGEST TROUBLEMAKER: China should not be carrying out any such exercises given the threat to regional peace and stability, Premier Cho Jung-tai said yesterday The Ministry of National Defense yesterday said that live-fire Chinese drills in a province facing Taiwan are part of routine annual drills, but also possibly part of China’s “deterrence effect” in the waters of the Taiwan Strait. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration, in a notice late on Monday, said an area around Niushan Island in China’s Fujian Province would be closed off for four hours from 9am yesterday for live-fire drills. Niushan sits just south of the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands. The ministry in a statement said that the exercises are part of routine Chinese training and it was keeping a close watch, but