- The Washington Post writes for almost four decades, the United States has upheld its commitment to help Taiwan provide for its own self-defense against China — but the Trump administration has yet to affirm it. As a planned arms-sales package lingers in limbo, officials, lawmakers and experts worry that President Trump may be granting yet another unreciprocated concession to Beijing. The relatively small sale to Taiwan — worth just more than $1 billion — was set to go in late 2016, but the Obama administration never pulled the trigger. After some early pro-Taiwan signals from President Trump, including a phone call with its president, most Taiwan watchers expected the new administration to move the package forward quickly. Now, administration and congressional officials say, the deal is stalled due to a lack of administration consensus and the fear that angering Beijing could complicate Trump's top Asia priority: solving the North Korean crisis. One possibility is that the administration is preparing to bundle the limited Obama Taiwan arms package with more robust weapons. The Taiwanese government is expressing interest, for example, in acquiring the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. But doing so might complicate the surrounding diplomacy even more and cause further delays. Some U.S. officials want Trump to move forward with the smaller arms package now, to establish that the United States is still committed to aiding Taiwan's defenses in the Trump era. Many are advocating for a return to a more regular process whereby requests are considered and sales notified on an annual basis.
CNBC reports that when asked about volatile Chinese stocks, investing legend Warren Buffett said Saturday that markets can sometimes resemble a "casino." The Oracle of Omaha offered advice to the world's second-largest economy, which in recent years has struggled to manage the fallout from an economic slowdown. Chinese authorities have imposed capital controls, and tightly manage the levels of its currency, the yuan. "Early on in the development of markets there's probably some tendency for them I think to be more speculative than markets that have been around for a couple hundred years," Buffett said, in response to a Chinese investor's question. He was speaking at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting. "Markets have a casino characteristic that has a lot of appeal to people, particularly when they see people getting rich around them," Buffett said. "And those who haven't been through cycles before are more prone to speculate than people who have experienced the outcome of wild speculation." The New York Stock Exchange launched in the late 18th-century. In contrast, the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened in 1990.
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