The Trump administration is debating whether to allow a planned U.S. stopover by Taiwan’s leader next week as concerns mount that it could derail trade talks with China and a potential summit with President Xi Jinping, according to people familiar with the matter.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te was planning 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, Bloomberg reported earlier this month. Planning for the trip was thrown into flux late last week when Taiwanese officials couldn’t get their U.S. counterparts to give the green light, the people said.

The hesitation over allowing Lai’s trip has unnerved some officials in the U.S. as well as in Taipei who fear President Donald Trump may concede too much to China as he seeks a meeting with Xi, the people said. Bloomberg reported earlier that Trump’s administration was reaching out to CEOs to accompany him on a possible trip to Beijing later this year.

The White House and U.S. State Department didn’t reply to requests for comment made outside normal working hours.

President Lai 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 said in a statement Monday.

The U.S. has delayed such trips in the past, and could yet suggest an alternative timeframe and layover locations. Last year, Lai pushed back a planned transit through Hawaii and Guam by several months following a Biden administration request to wait until after the U.S. election, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Lai’s planned visit comes at a delicate diplomatic moment. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng on Monday are convening their trade teams in Stockholm to advance talks for a deal with ramifications for global markets. An extension of a trade 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, in particular by staging large-scale military exercises surrounding the island following former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in 2022.

Any hesitation from Trump over transits by Taiwan’s president will fan concerns that Washington’s position on the self-ruled democracy, which Beijing considers a renegade province, could become 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.

While the U.S. doesn’t have official ties with Taiwan, it’s legally obliged to provide weapons for the island’s self-defense and is Taiwan’s top supplier of military equipment.

“The fact that at least some in the administration are putting our partnership with Taiwan on the table with Beijing is deeply concerning, and sends a dangerous message to Beijing,” said Laura Rosenberger, a former US 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.”

Embattled Leader

Lai, who won last year’s presidential election with the lowest winning percentage since 2000, also 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 by then-leader Lee Teng-hui to speak at Cornell University in 1995 sparked the so-called 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 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 mark 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.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce told reporters earlier this month that layovers by Taiwanese presidents are routine. “Transits of the United States by high-level Taiwan officials, including presidents are in line with past practice and fully consistent with our longstanding policy,” she said.

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(With assistance from Eric Martin, Ben Sills and Cindy Wang.)

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