TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Donald Trump accused Taiwan of “stealing” the chip business and suggested it pay the U.S. for protection in a Bloomberg interview at Mar-a-Lago on June 25. 

Former U.S. President Trump made the comments to Bloomberg’s Nancy Cook and colleagues at Bloomberg’s Business Week, where his interview touched on a wide range of topics, including the U.S. economy, his multiple legal cases, Russia, and Taiwan.

Cook told Bloomberg’s “The Big Take” that Trump was in a great mood during the interview, buoyed by fundraising numbers that had picked up faster than anticipated and polling showing him doing well and expanding the election map.

Cook said the topic of Taiwan was sort of a “throwaway question,” at the end, which Trump responded to surprisingly. Trump said the U.S. has been Taiwan’s insurance policy for years and was unsure if it made sense to defend Taiwan when China wants it so badly.

Cook’s interview was later published in the article “Trump on Taxes, Tariffs, Jerome Powell, and More," published by Bloomberg on Tuesday (July 16). In the article, Trump discussed his economic plan if he returned to power, boiling it down to "low interest rates and low taxes," adding that there were "huge incentives to get the job done and bring business back to our country."

Later in the article, Trump appears lukewarm on protecting Taiwan from Chinese invasion, even though the Taiwan Relations Act is a long-standing U.S. foreign policy commitment to provide Taiwan with defensive arms, which enjoys broad bipartisan support. 

Trump said his skepticism stems from the practical difficulty of defending a country halfway around the world and a desire to coax Taiwan to pay protection fees to the United States.

In the article, Trump expressed anger, claiming that Taiwan had stolen the global chip business and profited handsomely, with the U.S. merely serving as an insurance policy against a Chinese invasion. Given these circumstances, he suggested the U.S. should reconsider its Taiwan position.