The BLUF - June 2nd

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This is Atlas, and you’re reading the Bottom Line Up Front, where we cover the top geopolitical stories from around the world every Tuesday!

Today’s topics:

• Taiwan Opposition Leader Sets Off For Two Week U.S. Trip

• Trump: Cessation Of Fighting Between Hezbollah & Israel

• Florida Opens Lawsuit Against ChatGPT

Taiwan Opposition Leader Sets Off For Two Week U.S. Trip

_{By: Atlas}

Kuomintang chairwoman Cheng Li-wun left Taipei on Monday night for a 15-day tour of the United States, her first trip to Washington's most important security partner since taking the helm of Taiwan's main opposition party in November and a politically sensitive sequel to her April visit to Beijing, where she met Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People.

Cheng's itinerary includes stops in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles before her return to Taiwan on June 16. She is scheduled to meet members of Congress, U.S. government officials, business leaders, academics, and members of overseas Taiwanese communities. In Washington, KMT officials have said her schedule includes meetings with officials from the State Department, the Department of War, and what Cheng described as the "Taiwan-related system" within the U.S. government, though she declined to identify any individual interlocutors before her departure.

Speaking at a press conference in Taipei before leaving, Cheng said the principal goal of the trip was to address what she described as years of "misinformation" about her party by Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party. "We hope to help our American friends once again understand that, from World War II to today, the KMT has been the most loyal and responsible force capable of maintaining cross-strait peace," she said. The trip, she said, could "help prevent the U.S. from being drawn into an avoidable war that would seriously harm its national interests."

The Beijing Backdrop

The trip is being watched closely because of what preceded it. Cheng visited Beijing from April 7 to 12, meeting Xi on April 10 in the first encounter between the leaders of the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party in nearly a decade. The two posed for photographs, held public remarks, and met privately. Cheng told reporters in Beijing that officials on both sides should work to "transcend political confrontation and mutual hostility" and described the Taiwan Strait as one that should "connect family ties, civilization, and hope." Days after the meeting, Beijing announced a package of ten measures aimed at promoting cross-strait exchanges that was widely interpreted as designed to lift Cheng's political profile.

Cheng has been consistent about the constitutional argument she intends to make in Washington. In a May 28 briefing to the KMT's Central Standing Committee, she said her purpose in the United States would be to persuade American officials that the Republic of China Constitution is a "one China" constitution and that the KMT's reading of cross-strait relations was a foundation for stability rather than concession. "We would not be troublemakers and drag the U.S. under," she told the committee.

Her rhetoric has at times gone further than many in her own party have been comfortable with. KMT lawmakers were reportedly uneasy with what they viewed as the over-prioritization of cross-strait engagement during her first months in office, and her comments in Beijing on Japan's history of militarism, which echoed Chinese talking points, surprised foreign partners including Tokyo.

The Defense Budget Question

The most concrete area of friction between the KMT and Washington concerns money. The KMT and its smaller ally, the Taiwan People's Party, hold a majority in Taiwan's legislature and last month passed a special defense budget of NT$780 billion, or roughly $25 billion. The figure was significantly below the NT$1.25 trillion sought by President Lai Ching-te's Democratic Progressive Party government, which had proposed spending nearly $40 billion on weapons including U.S. arms and domestically produced drones.

The cut effectively removed funding for the drone-production effort that U.S. officials have been pushing Taiwan to develop as a hedge against a Chinese invasion. American officials have repeatedly urged Taipei to increase defense outlays.

Peter Mattis, president of the Jamestown Foundation, told Nikkei Asia that Cheng's principal challenge in Washington would be persuading U.S. officials that the KMT should be "treated as a good faith actor and a normal part in Taiwanese politics, instead of Beijing's proxies like Hong Kong's elites." Mattis said the perception in Washington was that the KMT "often appears to be obstructing and offering excuses rather than trying to play a positive role."

Raymond Greene, the de facto U.S. envoy to Taipei, said in a May 21 interview with Taiwan's Central News Agency that many American lawmakers and scholars wanted to ask Cheng whether the KMT leadership "is fundamentally changing the party's political orientation," noting that international reporting had produced "the impression that the KMT has started to adopt or emulate CCP positions on key diplomatic and security issues."

The Trump Question

The most prominent unresolved question about the trip is whether Cheng will meet President Donald Trump. Cheng said at her pre-departure press conference she would be "very willing" to do so if the opportunity arose. "Anything that is helpful to peace, I am willing to do; anyone who is helpful to peace, I am willing to meet — let alone the most critical decision-maker and leader, which is the president of the United States," she said. She acknowledged, however, that no sitting U.S. president has met with a Taiwanese leader since Washington severed formal diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979, and noted that her only official position is as KMT chairwoman, not as a Taiwan government official.

People close to the White House have indicated that Cheng should not expect meetings with senior administration officials, citing a policy framework under which the administration generally engages foreign opposition leaders only when they are seen as likely future heads of government. Trump's own posture on Taiwan has become harder to read since his May summit with Xi in Beijing. He has not approved the roughly $14 billion arms package long pending for Taiwan and has described the package as a "negotiating chip." Acting U.S. Navy chief Hung Cao recently said arms sales were on pause owing to munitions needs in the Iran war, a characterization that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on Saturday, said was "decoupled" from the broader policy.

Cheng's trip will also unfold in parallel with separate reporting that Trump no longer expects to speak directly with Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te before Xi's anticipated visit to the United States this fall. That posture is consistent with longstanding U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity and formal acknowledgment of "One China," but it leaves the elected Taiwanese government without the open line of communication to the White House it had hoped to secure.

The Internal Stakes

Cheng's trip also carries implications for the KMT itself. Her elevation to the chairmanship in November came as a surprise to much of the party's old guard, most of whom opposed her in the leadership race. The U.S. trip follows a similar March visit by Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen, who had been widely regarded as the leading KMT contender for the 2028 presidential nomination.

If Cheng returns to Taipei having secured high-level meetings in Washington, she will have positioned herself as the party figure best equipped to manage both Beijing and the United States — a profile that would directly compete with Lu's. Whether the U.S. visit produces that result, or whether it produces the "far less pomp and far sharper questions" that Ryan Hass of the Brookings Institution predicted for Cheng's reception in Washington, will become clearer over the next two weeks.

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