Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party faces mounting political turmoil and scandal, weakening its ability to govern despite recent electoral wins. At the same time, doubts about U.S. security support under Trump leave Taiwan increasingly vulnerable amid rising tensions with China.
Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) seems to have had a very successful run in recent years. The party’s nominee for president has prevailed in three consecutive elections. Tsai ing-wen won a comfortable victory in 2016 and scored a landslide triumph for re-election in 2020. The DPP’s choice to succeed her, Lai Ching-te, also carried the day in 2024, albeit by a narrower margin.
Despite Beijing’s growing impatience with Taipei’s continuing effort to preserve the island’s de facto independence, the DPP governments successfully maintained that feature of their policy agenda. The determination of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to increase its displays of air and naval power in Taiwan’s neighborhood was worrisome, but Taipei’s security relationship with the United States grew steadily closer—with strong bipartisan approval in the United States. That development was apparent not only during Donald Trump’s first administration, but to the surprise of many experts on East Asian affairs, the trend persisted throughout Joe Biden’s presidency.
Despite such achievements, the DPP is now confronting multiple crises. One early sign of trouble was the party’s surprisingly weak showing in local elections during the period leading up to the 2024 national election. Moreover, despite Lai’s victory in the presidential race, the DPP failed to win control of the national legislature. A coalition of opposition parties that favored a much less confrontational policy toward Beijing did so. Coalition leaders also moved promptly to cut spending, limit Lai’s powers, and impede his policy agenda.
That partisan struggle continues to intensify, with each side accusing the other of undermining Taiwan’s democracy. In January 2025, The DPP led an effort to recall opposition members of parliament—even some who had been elected to their seats just months earlier. When that recall campaign continued, angry opponents accused Lai of trying to become a dictator. In May 2025, the majority coalition struck back, pushing through a series of highly controversial “reforms.” Those measures included requiring ministers in Lai’s administration to give reports directly to the legislature. Failure to comply with such a directive was extremely risky, since another reform criminalized alleged “contempt of parliament” actions. Public anger at the new powers led to massive street demonstrations in Taipei and other cities, as well as physical altercations on the floor of parliament.
Adding to those political headaches for Lai and the DPP, a scandal involving allegations of disloyalty—and perhaps outright treason—erupted in June 2025. Authorities arrested four members of the previous DPP administration for allegedly leaking classified information to Beijing. If evidence of such misconduct had emerged against the principal opposition Kuomintang (KMT) Party or the PRC-friendly Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), it would have been surprising enough. But seeing the DPP, the party supposedly committed to Taiwan’s official (not just de facto) independence, being suspected of such an offense was stunning. The scandal also has opened serious organizational fractures in the party.
Predictably, the opposition coalition has exploited the DPP’s new vulnerability as well, seizing on the scandals to criticize the party’s security record. KMT leaders likely view the current situation with grim satisfaction. They have repeatedly complained that their opponents try to “paint the KMT red,” (i.e., as subservient to Beijing). KMT spokeswoman Yang Chih-yu sneered at the DPP’s long-standing allegations that her party was unduly friendly to the PRC, asking “Who’s the real betrayer of Taiwan?”
In addition to the DPP’s mounting domestic political woes, there are new doubts about the extent and reliability of Washington’s unofficial, but very real, commitment to Taiwan’s security. The prevailing assumption was that Donald Trump’s return as the U.S. president would be very good news for hardliners in Taiwan who want to push the envelope on independence. Elbridge Colby, the official Trump chose to be undersecretary of defense for policy in his second administration is renowned for being an avid supporter of Taiwan. Indeed, Colby is known for embracing a hardline approach toward Beijing on a range of issues throughout East Asia.
However, Trump’s early statements indicated that Washington’s support for Taiwan’s security was far from unconditional. He immediately pressured Taipei to raise its yearly defense spending, reportedly to 5 percent of annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That would be the same demand Trump is making to all members of NATO, and it is consistent with his longstanding complaints about allied “free riding” and his insistence on greater “burden sharing” by America’s security clients. However, there appears to be little support within the Taiwanese public for boosting military spending to anywhere near the level Trump envisions.
Senior Taiwan officials insist that they remain extremely confident about the continuation of Washington’s security shield. Joseph Wu, the head of Taiwan’s National Security Council, had been especially emphatic on that point. Hawkish American analysts have reached a similar conclusion that Trump will never abandon Taiwan, given the island’s economic and strategic importance.
Nevertheless, Trump’s comments are inevitably raising some doubts. Moreover, he is caustic about Taiwan’s role as an economic competitor of the United States. Just before his election in 2024, Trump stated that Taiwan had stolen America’s semiconductor business through unfair trade practices.
Even more doubts have surfaced in Taiwan about the stability of Washington’s role as the island’s military protector because of comments that former senior U.S. military officials expressed after a comprehensive war game held in Taipei in early June 2025. Notable participants included Michael Mullen, a former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff; Dennis Blair, a former U.S. Pacific commander; and Shigeru Iwasaki, former chief of staff of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces. After the two-day exercise, multiple participants expressed worries about “systemic weaknesses” in Taiwan’s probable response to a simulated PRC attack in 2030.
At a press conference after the war game, Blair said specifically that the U.S. response to a PRC attack on Taiwan would depend both on the cause of the conflict and the extent of Taiwan’s own commitment to self-defense. In what seemed to be a dual (and somewhat contradictory) warning to Taipei, Blair emphasized that “Taiwan’s will to fight will have a great deal of effect” on U.S. decisions. However, “If a conflict were triggered by Taiwanese moves towards formal independence,” he added, “U.S. support would be far less certain.”
If that stance accurately reflects current U.S. policy, any Taiwanese government must execute an extremely delicate balancing act. Such a task would be even more difficult for the DPP administration given current conditions. The bottom line is that Taiwan is a deeply divided society politically, and those divisions are becoming more intense and intractable. The United States faces the prospect of being called upon to defend a client state that seems uncertain about what kind of policy it wants to adopt toward the PRC and how much it is willing to do for its own defense. The conditions are in place for a highly volatile, dangerous situation—not only for Taiwan but also for the United States.
