Taiwan–United States relations are unofficial and informal. Both sides maintain representative offices functioning as de facto embassies. Taiwan is represented by the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, while the U.S. government is represented by the American Institute in Taiwan.
Taiwan is the United States' ninth largest trading partner.Sacks, David. Enhancing U.S.-Japan Coordination for a Taiwan Conflict. Council on Foreign Relations, 2022. JSTOR website Retrieved 20 June 2025. The U.S. has viewed Taiwan as geostrategically important given its key location in the first island chain. The United States follows its Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), which allows it to have relations with the Taiwanese people and their government, whose name is not specified in that law.
As stipulated by the TRA, the United States remains the main provider of arms to Taiwan. The relations have been further grounded in the Six Assurances, which was a response to the third communiqué issued when the United States established diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1979.
Over the past four decades, the U.S. government's policy of deliberate ambiguity toward Taiwan has been viewed as critical to stabilizing cross-strait relations by seeking to deter the PRC from using force toward the region and dissuade Taiwan from seeking independence. However, in recent years as Beijing escalated its moves and further clarified its intentions, the effectiveness of strategic ambiguity became a topic of debate in academic and policy communities.
The Taiwan Travel Act, passed by the U.S. Congress on March 16, 2018, allows high-level U.S. officials to visit Taiwan and vice versa. Both sides have since signed a consular agreement formalizing their existent consular relations on September 13, 2019. The US government removed self-imposed restrictions on executive branch contacts with Taiwan on January 9, 2021.
History Background
Two American diplomats in the 1850s suggested to Washington that the U.S. should obtain the island of Taiwan from China, but the idea was rejected.Leonard Gordon, "Early American Relations with Formosa, 1849–1870." Historian 19.3 (1957): 262–289 at pp 271-77. Aboriginals in Taiwan often attacked and massacred shipwrecked western sailors, and American diplomats tried to help them. In 1867, during the Rover incident, a group of Taiwanese Indigenous people killed the crew of a wrecked American ship. A subsequent U.S. military expedition attempted retaliation but was defeated in a skirmish, resulting in the death of another American.Leonard Gordon, "Early American Relations with Formosa, 1849–1870." at pp 264-68.
During the period of Japanese rule over Taiwan (then Formosa), the United States operated a consulate in Taihoku (now Taipei), beginning in 1913. The consulate was closed in 1941 due to United States declaration of war on Japan. In 1997, the building, housing the Taipei Film House was listed as historic monument by the Taiwanese government.
During the Pacific War, the United States and the Republic of China (then based in mainland China) were allied against Japan that was occupying the island of Taiwan (Formosa). As early as 1943, the United States Army Air Forces launched several air raids against military and industrial targets in Japanese Taiwan. After American ground forces captured Subic Bay in the Philippines, the Allied air forces began larger and more systematic air raids against targets on the island of Taiwan. On 31 May 1945, units of the Fifth Air Force consisting of 117 Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bombers were sent to conduct the largest air raid ever on Taiwan. The non-stop bombing began around 10 in the morning and lasted for three hours. The Americans met virtually no resistance from the Japanese, mainly due to the attrition the Japanese air forces had suffered in the Formosa Air Battle, which completely exhausted Japan's fighter units in Taiwan. The Allied forces dropped approximately 3,800 bombs on military units and governmental facilities in Taihoku (Taipei), including the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan (today the Presidential Office Building), and killing more than 3000 civilians.
In October 1945, a month after Japan's surrender, representatives of Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek, on behalf of the Allies, were sent to Formosa to accept the surrender of Japanese troops. However, during the period of the 1940s, there was no recognition by the United States Government that Taiwan had ever been incorporated into Chinese national territory. Chiang continued to remain suspicious of America's motives.
ROC recognition period
After being defeated by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) forces in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, the Nationalist government of the Republic of China retreated to Taiwan. In August 1949, the United States suspended the Republic of China's participation in the Fulbright Program, as the ROC government, then in retreat, was unable to continue payments on surplus war materials purchased from the United States following World War II.
On January 5, 1950, United States President Harry S. Truman issued a statement that the United States would not become involved in "the civil conflict in China" and would not provide military aid or advice to the Nationalist forces in Taiwan. On February 6, 1950, the ROC Air Force bombed Shanghai, causing extensive damage to American-owned property in the city including the Shanghai power company. The American government responded by sending a diplomatic protest to the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
As the Korean War broke out in 1950, the United States resumed military aid to the ROC and sent the US Navy's Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait. US military presence in Taiwan consisted of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) and the United States Taiwan Defense Command (USTDC). Other notable units included the 327th Air Division. United States military, technical, and economic aid to Taiwan increased following China's entry into the Korean War in late October 1950. United States General Douglas MacArthur described Taiwan as an "unsinkable aircraft carrier" and visited the island during the war.
Until the U.S. formally recognized the People's Republic of China in 1979, the U.S. had provided ROC with financial grants based on the Foreign Assistance Act, Mutual Security Act, and Act for International Development enacted by the US Congress. Taiwan became a top recipient of United States aid in the following years.
During a visit to Taiwan in 1953, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon stated that the United States would support the development of Taiwan as an anti-communist military and cultural stronghold. The Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty was signed between the US and ROC in 1954 and lasted until 1979. In 1954, the United States began providing significant funding for education in Taiwan, including to attract overseas Chinese. These efforts also helped the KMT to consolidate its power on Taiwan.
However, persistent mistrust of the United States plagued Chiang Kai-shek since World War II and lasted into his rule in Taiwan, driven by the perceived possible abandonment since the loss of mainland China, inconsistent support and Washington's shifting Cold War priorities. Chiang even suspected that the United States was plotting to overthrow him with the help of his closest associates or with leftists and Taiwanese independence activists. The Sun Li-jen incident was a prominent example of Chiang's paranoia, as Sun, a KMT general who was educated at the American Virginia Military Institute, was accused of working with the CIA to remove Chiang from power.
On 24 May 1957, an angry mob stormed and sacked the U.S. Embassy and Information Service in Taipei, triggered by the acquittal of U.S. Army Sergeant Robert G. Reynolds for killing a Taiwanese citizen. The unrest caused significant damage, injuring 11 foreign nationals and 62 policemen and compelled the Chiang Kai-shek government to express profound regret for the rare anti-American protest.
The U.S. State Department's official position on Taiwan in 1959 was:
On April 24, 1970, Taiwanese activist Peter Huang attempted to assassinate Chiang Ching-kuo in New York City.
After US–PRC normalization
During the early Cold War the United States deployed nuclear weapons on Taiwan as part of the United States Taiwan Defense Command. In 1972, United States president Richard Nixon ordered nuclear weapons to be removed from Taiwan and this was implemented by 1974.
In the 1970s, the Kuomintang (KMT) government, led by Executive Yuan Premier Chiang Ching-kuo, launched a people's diplomacy campaign in the United States aimed at rallying public and political opposition to the People's Republic of China through demonstrations and petitions. Among these efforts, the KMT worked with the John Birch Society to launch a petition writing campaign through which Americans were urged to write their local government officials and ask them to "Cut the Red China connection."
During its martial law period (1949 to 1987), the Taiwan government surveilled Taiwanese abroad, most often in Japan and in the United States. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation often cooperated with or allowed the KMT to surveil Taiwanese students and other Taiwanese migrants in the United States.
According to a 1979 report by the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Taiwan government operated one of the two most active anti-dissident networks within the United States, with agents infiltrated within universities and campus organizations and large-scale propaganda campaigns implemented through front organizations.
In 1979 and 1980, a series of bombings targeted KMT offices and officials in the United States. The United States placed the World United Formosans for Independence on its terrorist organization watch list as a result.
At the height of the Sino-Soviet Split, and at the start of the reform and opening of People's Republic of China, the United States strategically switched diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (ROC) to the People's Republic of China (PRC) on January 1, 1979, to counter the political influences and military threats from the Soviet Union. The US Embassy in Taipei was 'migrated' to Beijing and the Taiwanese Embassy in the US was closed. Following the termination of diplomatic relations, the United States terminated its Mutual Defense Treaty with Taiwan on January 1, 1980. The switch ended the PRC's intermittent bombardment of the ROC's Kinmen Island that had begun with the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis.
On April 10, 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Taiwan Relations Act, which created domestic legal authority for the conduct of unofficial relations with Taiwan. U.S. commercial, cultural, and other interaction with the people on Taiwan is facilitated through the American Institute in Taiwan, a private nonprofit corporation. The institute has its headquarters in the Washington area and has a main office in Taipei and a branch office in Kaohsiung. It is authorized to issue visas, accept passport applications, and provide assistance to U.S. citizens in Taiwan. A counterpart mission, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States, has been established by Taiwan. The representative office located in Washington, DC, and has 12 other Taipei Economic and Cultural Offices in the continental U.S. and Guam. The Taiwan Relations Act continues to provide the legal basis for the unofficial relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan, and enshrines the U.S. commitment to assisting Taiwan maintain its defensive capability.
Taiwan helped Ronald Reagan circumvent the Boland Amendment by providing covert support to the Contras in Nicaragua.
Reagan pressured Taiwan into giving up its Sky Horse ballistic missile program.