Taiwan’s top envoy to the U.S. urged the Senate to ease tax burdens between the two countries and asked Congress to fast-track foreign military sales, following a closed-door lunch Wednesday with the House.
Ambassador Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, Taipei’s top representative in Washington, told Fox News Digital that he is encouraged that U.S. leaders recognize the urgent existential threat China poses, but emphasized the need to get weapons into the hands of the Taiwanese military more quickly and to address issues impeding two-way investment.
‘We appreciate the United States prioritizing Taiwan and helping us strengthen our defense capabilities,’ Yui said. ‘We’re cheering on more military commitments to the states and [a] joint effort to speed up the delivery of the products that we bought.’
Yui called on the Senate to advance a stalled double taxation agreement, which has already cleared the House.
‘That’s an important incentive for Taiwanese companies to come to the United States and invest – but also vice versa for U.S. companies to go to Taiwan,’ he said. ‘We are the only one of the large trading partners without this treatment, which is worrying for the whole country right now.’
By a vote of 423 to 1, the House last Congress passed the United States-Taiwan Expedited Double-Tax Relief Act, legislation that prevents double taxation on cross-border investments.
The ambassador also offered a sobering assessment of China’s increasingly belligerent posture in the Taiwan Strait and across the Indo-Pacific.
‘We are concerned,’ Yui said. ‘The [People’s Liberation] Army and Navy are increasing their activities around Taiwan, harassing our territorial waters and airspace. These provocations are constant.’
While emphasizing that ‘we don’t want war,’ he noted that the U.S. and regional partners have begun ramping up their own defenses, recognizing the threat.
Rep. August Pfluger, who chairs the influential RSC, told Fox News Digital that the meeting was a show of solidarity with Taiwan’s democratic government and a rebuke of China’s authoritarian policies.
‘China is an existential threat to Taiwan,’ said Pfluger, a Texas Republican. ‘The difference between mainland China and Taiwan is how they treat human life. Taiwan values openness. China suppresses free speech, targets groups like the Uyghur Muslims – it’s deeply concerning.’
The lunch meeting, attended by dozens of House Republicans, comes amid rising tensions in the region – but just as President Donald Trump announced a deal with Chinese President Xi Jinping to ease the trade war.
While Pfluger did not commit to further supplemental aid, he said he supports efforts by both nations to strengthen military readiness, including Taiwan’s move to increase defense spending to 3% of GDP.
‘It stands to reason that Taiwan increasing their own internal spending on defense, as well as the U.S. recapitalizing our Navy and Air and Space Forces, is vitally important,’ he said.
Asked what message Congress wants to send to the Taiwanese people, Pfluger was unequivocal:
‘We stand by them – as an ally, as a trading partner, as a democracy facing tyranny just next door.’
The conversation came at a time when U.S. military officials are warning China is readying for battle in the Indo-Pacific in an effort to ‘dominate’ the region.
‘Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,’ Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Congress this week. He added that such an outcome could put the U.S. economy and its supply chains in a choke hold.
‘China is undertaking a historic military buildup and actively rehearsing for an invasion of Taiwan,’ he said.
‘These aggressive maneuvers are not routine exercises, they are rehearsals for a forced unification,’ Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, added in his own testimony.
Taiwan has recently renewed an effort to purge its ranks of Chinese sympathizers, indicting four people on Tuesday suspected of spying for China that had infiltrated the presidential office.
Two Chinese aircraft carriers spotted conducting operations in the Pacific demonstrated the country’s ‘expansionist’ aims, Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo said Wednesday.
‘Crossing from the first island chain into the second island chain sends a definite political message and their expansionist nature can be seen,’ he told reporters in Taipei.
The first island chain refers to the region from Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines to Borneo and the second island chain spreads farther into the Pacific, toward the U.S. territory of Guam.