What We Know About Trump's Offer to Sell China US Weapons

U.S. Ambassador to China David Perdue said Sunday that President Donald Trump asked Xi Jinping directly whether China would like to purchase American weapons, a remark made during Xi's visit to the White House last week, according to The Guardian.

What did Ambassador Perdue actually say?

Speaking to Fox News on Sunday, Perdue described the exchange this way: "President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point," per the Guardian's report, published Sept. 28, 2026. Perdue's comments came during a broadcast interview about broader U.S.-Taiwan policy, not a written statement, so the remark reached the public secondhand through the ambassador's account of a private exchange between the two leaders.

How did China react to the visit?

Chinese state media on Monday praised what it called the "extraordinary level of courtesy" Trump extended to Xi during the Washington visit, the Guardian reported. That characterization came from state media coverage of the trip, not from a Chinese government spokesperson addressing the weapons remark specifically.

Why does this touch on Taiwan?

The interview happened as Washington has left a $14 billion arms sales package for Taiwan pending for months, following a separate, larger multibillion-dollar deal announced in December 2025, according to the Guardian. At a May meeting with Xi in Beijing, Trump said he was holding the $14 billion package "in abeyance," calling it a "very good negotiating chip" in talks with Beijing — his own characterization, as reported by the Guardian.

What is the U.S. legally required to do for Taiwan?

Under the decades-old Taiwan Relations Act, Washington is required to provide Taipei with sufficient military equipment for self-defense, the Guardian noted. The U.S. has long paired that legal obligation with strategic ambiguity on whether it would intervene militarily if China invaded. Beijing, which regards Taiwan as a breakaway province despite never having governed it, has "repeatedly said it 'resolutely opposes'" U.S. arms sales to the island and has not renounced the use of force to bring it under Chinese control, per the Guardian.

What happens next with the pending arms package?

The Guardian's report does not specify a timeline for Trump's decision on the $14 billion Taiwan package. Perdue's remarks arrived alongside a Taiwanese minister's description of a "severe" military threat from Beijing, according to the Guardian's framing of the story, underscoring how the ambassador's comment about a hypothetical China arms sale lands amid an unresolved, real one for Taiwan.

For reporters and researchers working from broadcast interviews like Perdue's Fox News appearance, transcription and verification tools such as ElevenLabs have become part of the standard toolkit for checking exact wording against network airchecks.

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