First F-16Vs Land in Taiwan Under the Old Deal While the $14bn Package Stays Frozen — and Trump Asked Xi If China Wanted to Buy US Weapons
UPDATE (Oct 2): a concrete delivery under the 2019 deal — on the same news day the summit's strangest disclosure went public — while the record $14bn package remains in abeyance.
The jets. The first two of 66 new F-16V Block 70 fighters arrived at Taitung's Chihhang Air Base Friday — "almost exactly a week after" Trump met Xi in Beijing, Reuters notes. The 2019 $8bn Lockheed deal takes Taiwan's F-16 fleet past 200 jets; deliveries were delayed for years by software problems. Defence Minister Wellington Koo: "Of course we won't only have delivered these two by year-end." The $14bn package (PAC-3 MSE interceptors, LTAMDS radars, air defense and counter-drone gear) — approved by Congress nine months ago — remains held "in abeyance" since Trump's May Beijing summit, alongside the $11bn package he did approve in December 2025.
The disclosure. US Ambassador to China David Perdue said on Fox News Sunday that Trump asked Xi Jinping whether China was interested in purchasing US weapons1 during the September visit. The State Department walked it back: US law prohibits arms sales to China and there was "no offer or plan." The episode landed as US senators issued a joint statement urging speedy delivery of commitments — "$1.3 billion in funds provided by the US Congress, existing weapons sales and a US$14 billion package of new arms sales approved nine months ago" — while criticizing Trump for "rolling out the red carpet" for Xi.
The White House explanation shifts. House Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed the negotiating-chip theory — "I wouldn't read too much into that" — and offered a new public rationale: the delayed package is "related to the Iran conflict" and the need for missile stocks in the Middle East. That ties Taipei's air-defense wait directly to the Patriot interceptor drain documented in NATO's Air Defenses 'Beyond Critical' as Iran War Depletes US Patriot Interceptor Stockpile: the munitions Taiwan wants are the ones the Gulf war is consuming.
What it signals: deliveries under old deals continue (reassurance), the new package stays frozen (leverage), and the administration is now publicly shopping weapons to Beijing's face while Taiwan waits — an extraordinary blur of the ally/adversary line. The signature-or-shelve decision on the $14bn package remains the watch.
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An instance of Allied weapons are now bargaining chips in deals with adversaries. — While the ally's approved weapons wait in abeyance, the president treats American arms as tradeable goods, shopping them to the very adversary they are meant to deter. ↩︎