Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has called off an overseas trip planned for next week after the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump failed to greenlight his stopover in the U.S. amid concerns it could derail trade talks with China.
Taiwan’s leader isn’t planning any overseas travel in the near future, given the need for typhoon recovery work in southern Taiwan and tariff negotiations with the U.S., the Presidential Office in Taipei said in a statement late Monday. Lai is planning to go ahead with his trip later this year, according to one person familiar with the plans.
Lai had intended to stop in New York on Aug. 4 and then Dallas 10 days later as part of a trip to diplomatic allies Paraguay, Guatemala and Belize. Planning for that trip was thrown into flux late last week when Taiwanese officials couldn’t get their U.S. counterparts to give the go-ahead, according to people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. had mounting concerns Lai’s visit could disrupt trade negotiations with China and a potential summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the people said.
The hesitation over Lai’s trip unnerved some officials in the U.S., as well as in Taipei, who fear Trump may concede too much to China as he seeks a meeting with Xi, according to the people. Trump’s team has been reportedly reaching out to CEOs to join him on a possible trip to Beijing this year.
While Lai’s trip was never formally announced, officials in Paraguay and Guatemala had been expecting him to arrive next month, but no longer do so, according to people familiar with the preparations for his visit.
Trump officials denied Lai permission to transit through New York after China raised objections with Washington about the visit, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the decision. It was unclear whether he was also blocked from stopping over in Dallas, the newspaper added.
The rebuke will fan concerns that Washington’s position on the self-ruled democracy, which Beijing considers a part of its territory, is becoming a trade war bargaining chip. In an abrupt policy reversal, Trump already put on the negotiating table some tech curbs imposed on China over national security concerns.
"Trump’s decision to deny permission for President Lai to visit New York sends a dangerous signal: that the United States can be bullied by Beijing into silence on Taiwan,” said former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose 2022 visit to Taipei sparked uproar.
"This is a victory for Xi,” she wrote on social media platform X. "Let us hope it is not indicative of a dangerous change in U.S. policy.”
The White House didn’t reply to a request for comment. A State Department official said transits by high-level Taiwanese officials, including presidents, were fully consistent with longstanding U.S. policy and practice, which hasn’t changed.
Trump said Tuesday that he’s not "seeking” a meeting with Xi, though said he’s considering going to China at the invitation of the Chinese leader.
"I may go to China, but it would only be at the invitation of President Xi, which has been extended. Otherwise, no interest!” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
The U.S. could yet suggest an alternative time frame and layover locations. Last year, the Taiwanese president pushed back a planned transit through Hawaii and Guam by several months following a request from the administration of then-President Joe Biden to wait until after the U.S. election, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The Taiwanese president's planned visit came at a delicate diplomatic moment. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Monday met in Stockholm for talks aimed at advancing a trade deal with ramifications for global markets. An extension of a tariff truce reached between both sides is expected and would help pave the way for a Trump-Xi meeting.
China, which has branded Lai a "separatist” and "parasite,” views Taiwan as the most sensitive issue in relations with other countries. It has increasingly opposed U.S. interactions with Taiwanese leaders, often by staging large-scale military exercises surrounding the island, following Pelosi’s trip to Taipei.
Linking Taiwan to trade with China "sends a dangerous message to Beijing,” said Laura Rosenberger, a former U.S. diplomat who also chaired the American Institute in Taiwan until this year.
"At a time when Beijing is engaging in increasingly coercive behavior toward Taipei, the U.S. needs to be sending a clear message of commitment to longstanding precedents, not allowing Beijing to once again move the goalposts,” she added.
Lai, who won last year’s presidential election with the lowest winning percentage since 2000, now risks looking weak at home and abroad. Last weekend, a failed attempt to unseat lawmakers handed the opposition more ammunition for its agenda, which includes forging closer ties with Beijing.
Adding to the uncertainty, Taiwan’s trade officials are currently in Washington for talks aimed at clinching a deal to avert a threatened 32% tariff.
All of Taiwan’s sitting presidents since the 1990s have traveled to the U.S. on stopovers en route to other destinations. While most visits passed without triggering heightened tensions, a trip in 1995 by then-leader Lee Teng-hui to speak at Cornell University sparked what's referred to as the Third Strait Crisis, with China firing missiles into waters near the main island of Taiwan.
Stopover requests, on occasion, have been used as a way for U.S. leaders to signal displeasure with Taiwan’s policy.
The most prominent example of that came in 2006, when then-U.S. President George W. Bush scuttled then-Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian’s request to transit to Paraguay via either New York or San Francisco. That snub was taken as a sign his unofficial relationship with Washington had suffered a serious blow, after Chen upset the Bush administration with a series of pro-independence policies that risked provoking China.
Lai’s New York and Dallas stops would have been his first to continental U.S. soil since he became president last year and Trump took power in January. His transits in Hawaii and Guam last December were followed by what Taipei described as China’s largest naval deployment in years along the first island chain, which also includes Japan and the Philippines.
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