Former US President Donald Trump has said Taiwan should pay the US to protect it from China and accused the country of taking “all [its] chip business.”

The comments from Trump were made in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek on July 16.

Asked if he would defend Taiwan against China if he is re-elected in November, Trump said that the country – which the US does not formally recognize – should pay the US for protection.

Regarding the US foreign aid rules which see the country sell billions of dollars in weapons to Taiwan, Trump remarked: “I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?”

He added: “Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China,” implying that geography would also factor into his foreign policy decision-making.

In October 2021, President Biden said that the US has a commitment to defend Taiwan and would do so if the need arose.

While any invasion of Taiwan by China remains hypothetical, there have long been concerns that China could attempt to reunify the sovereign state of Taiwan with mainland China, with the Chinese government officially regarding the country as a breakaway province.

A speech given by Chen Wenling, chief economist for the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, in May 2022 saw him warn that should Russian-style sanctions be imposed on China by the US and allies, China "must recover Taiwan" and "seize TSMC, a company that originally belonged to China."

US military academics have also previously suggested that if China invades Taiwan, the country should instigate a ‘scorched earth policy’ and destroy its own semiconductor foundries in order to make itself a less useful and less attractive target.

Elsewhere in the interview, Trump also claimed, without evidence, that Taiwan had poached business from the US semiconductor market.

“Taiwan took our chip business from us. I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy,” he said.

The United States buys 92 percent of its leading-edge chips from TSMC in Taiwan, meaning any disruption to that supply chain would have a significant impact on the US economy and data center market.

Earlier this year, the US Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo, told the House Appropriations Committee that although TSMC was “vastly ahead of anything we’re doing in the United States,” as a result of the $11.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding the company was awarded in April, TSMC would soon be building its most advanced chips on US soil.

However, she did add that a hypothetical Chinese invasion of Taiwan and seizure of TSMC would be “absolutely devastating” for the United States.

In May, ASML, the sole global supplier of EUV photolithography machines, reportedly told the Dutch government it has installed a kill switch into an extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) machine it has sold to TSMC, allowing it to be shut down if China invades Taiwan.

Responding to Trump’s comments at a press briefing, Taiwan’s Premier, Cho Jung-tai said that Taiwan and the US share a common responsibility for the Indo-Pacific region of the Taiwan Strait, adding that the whole country was grateful to the US for its support it was looking to increase its self-defense capabilities.

Regarding Trump’s claims about the chip industry, Cho said that he hoped R&D would stay in China as in his view, that would be the “best option.”

“The government will maintain such an environment and continue to work with the industry,” he said.