Trump Reportedly Pitched US Weapons to Xi Jinping While Taiwan Waited for His Approval on a $14 Billion Arms Package
by Jerome London · Thought CatalogUpdated 2 minutes ago, September 28, 2026
The US ambassador to China says Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping about buying American weapons during Xi’s visit to Washington last week. David Perdue recounted the exchange on Fox News on Sunday, as Taiwan continued to await Trump’s approval of a $14 billion US arms package.
Perdue said Trump told Xi that the US sells arms around the world and asked whether China wanted to buy any. The White House later told the New York Times it had no plans to sell weapons to China. The State Department said, “US law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China.”
Taiwan has been waiting for months on the $14 billion package, following a separate multibillion-dollar deal announced in December. At a May meeting with Xi in Beijing, Trump said he was holding the new package back and called it a “very good negotiating chip” in talks with China.
Beijing claims Taiwan and opposes US arms sales to the island. During last week’s Washington meeting, Xi urged Trump to oppose “Taiwan independence,” according to China’s state news agency Xinhua. Before Perdue’s interview, Taiwanese deputy foreign minister Chen Ming-chi described the military threat from China as “severe” and said the US understood Taiwan’s defense needs.
US law requires Washington to provide Taiwan with equipment to defend itself, though the US has long left open whether it would intervene in an invasion. Perdue said Friday that Trump’s Taiwan policy, including arms sales, hadn’t changed. Trump said Saturday that Xi understood his position on Taiwan.
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