Biden says U.S. would militarily defend Taiwan should China invade
Yahoo Finance’s Rick Newman joins the Live show to discuss President Biden’s remarks on U.S. forces defending Taiwan against China should China invade.
Video Transcript
- Meantime, let's get to thing two this morning. And some bombshell statements from President Biden during a "60 Minutes" interview on Sunday. Let's bring in Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman on this story. Rick, the president has said some similar comments. He said them, what, a few months ago that were sort of then backpedaled by his staff. This seems a little bit more sort of resolute.
RICK NEWMAN: Biden is not listening to his staff on this one, I guess. The official US position on whether it would militarily defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion is strategic ambiguity. But Biden was not ambiguous, obviously. He just gave that one word answer. Yes, United States forces would defend Taiwan if China tried to attack it. So I guess Biden is just clarifying some of this strategic ambiguity.
Now, he did not change anything about the so-called one-China policy, where the United States says, look, it's up to Taiwan whether they want to actually declare independence from China, which they have not exactly done. So nothing has changed on that. But yeah. So he is just basically kind of blowing strategic ambiguity out of the water.
- And so Rick, within this, I mean, this, of course, and the US's relationship to Taiwan has had much larger implications, both geopolitical, but also supply chain considerations over many years. And so what is the White House saying about where that kind of factors into all of this as well?
RICK NEWMAN: Well, Taiwan is really important for semiconductors, among other things. And that's one obvious reason for strong economic ties between the United States and China. Let me focus on what the United States is not saying but I think is really important here. It's the war in Ukraine. So Russia tried to, obviously, annex a neighboring country, analogous to what China may try to do with Taiwan someday.
And I think the most important thing from China's perspective is to look what has happened to Russia. I mean, it become very isolated from the global economy. A huge economic hit to Russia. Ukraine's allies do not seem to be backing down. So I think I think perhaps Biden feels a little bit emboldened to say what he's saying about US defense of Taiwan because of what is happening in Ukraine. So I think China and Beijing, they have to take the lesson, look, if we ever do think we're going to move on Taiwan, we're going to pay a very, very large price economically and otherwise.
- And of course, President Xi's meeting with Vladimir Putin also feeding into this whole narrative as well and the comments that Xi did not make, I guess, a bit directly and publicly about Ukraine. Something else that Biden said kind of stood out to me. Well, a couple of things. He talked about the pandemic being over, which we're going to talk a little bit more about with Anjalee Khemlani later on. But as part of that, he said he's confident the US can get control over inflation. Maybe he's the only one. I don't know at this point because there's a lot of, obviously, in the economics community, a lot of consternation about the path of inflation.
RICK NEWMAN: And he said, look, we're hoping for a soft landing here. Of course he is. But he also did not really have any good answers on inflation. So Scott Pelley pressed him. Can you get inflation down? And Biden did what politicians often do when they don't have a good answer to the question that is posed, which is he answered another question that Scott Pelley didn't ask. Tell us about all your accomplishments might have been that question.
So Biden said, look, we're going to get inflation under control. But look at how strong the labor market is. We've got unemployment a mere 3.7%. We passed this legislation, bipartisan infrastructure bill, last year. He said health care costs are going to come down. Prescription drug costs are going to come down because of legislation. So he's doing what politicians often do, which is talking what he thinks are his positive talking points, his accomplishments, and kind of pushing the problematic issue to the side.
- Yahoo Finance's Rick Newman. Of course, a lot to continue to be discussed from the president's comments from that interview on "60 Minutes." Rick, we appreciate you breaking down--
RICK NEWMAN: Bye, guys.
- --some of the biggest themes here this morning. Appreciate it.
