A truce Taiwan was not at, and a war it paid for
Published 8 October 2026
Washington and Beijing reached a tactical truce in Busan on Thursday, October 30, 2025. Reuters reported that Trump called the meeting "amazing" and a "12" on a 10-point scale, while describing the outcome as a tactical truce and not a major reset. The Reuters piece is cited here for its headline and excerpt. Taiwan was not at the table.
The White House fact sheet of Saturday, November 1, 2025, written by the American side, lists the Chinese commitments. China would suspend the sweeping rare-earth export controls it announced on October 9, 2025, issue general licenses for rare earths, gallium, germanium, antimony and graphite for American end users, which the sheet calls "the de facto removal of controls China imposed since 2023," stop shipping certain fentanyl precursor chemicals to North America and strictly control some others worldwide, suspend all retaliatory tariffs announced since March 4, 2025, including on soybeans, pork, beef, wheat and other farm goods, and suspend non-tariff countermeasures, including listings of American firms. China would buy at least 12 million metric tons of American soybeans in the last two months of 2025 and at least 25 million metric tons in each of 2026, 2027 and 2028. It would also act to resume trade from Nexperia's China facilities, "allowing production of critical legacy chips to flow to the rest of the world," and end probes of American semiconductor firms per the sheet.
The American side removed 10 percentage points of the cumulative fentanyl tariff effective Monday, November 10, 2025, kept the suspension of higher "reciprocal" tariffs until November 10, 2026, with the 10 percent rate staying, extended certain Section 301 exclusions to November 10, 2026, and suspended for one year the rule extending export controls to affiliates of listed entities and the Section 301 shipbuilding actions. The fact sheet calls it "a massive victory," which is the White House's framing. Reuters, the same day, described the effect as cutting the overall American tariff on Chinese imports to about 47 percent from 57 percent, per American officials, and a one-year pause on China's rare-earth controls, averting a threatened 100 percent tariff. The White House text mentions no Taiwan item. The truce matters to the island because it set a clock: November 10, 2026, a Tuesday.
Then 2026 piled events on each other. The trade deal with Washington came on Thursday, January 15. The war on Iran and disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz exposed an energy risk. For Taiwan, with so much of its gas arriving by sea, the war turned an abstract vulnerability into a price shock. Four sources give four overlapping pictures of it, and they disagree on some numbers, which are named below with their sources and not merged.
On dependency, the Atlantic Council wrote on March 19, 2026 that Taiwan imported 95 percent of its energy in 2025, over 99 percent of its oil and gas. Before the war it took over 38 percent of its annual gas supply and about 70 percent of its crude oil from the Middle East, per Kpler data. Gas rose from about 17 percent of power generation in 2006 to nearly 48 percent in 2025. Qatar supplied about a third of liquefied natural gas, and Taiwan held about 150 days of oil and only 11 days of gas per the Council. Bloomberg, via the Taipei Times on May 8, said Taiwan imports around 96 percent of its energy, that liquefied gas is roughly half of power generation, and that the reserve is 11 days according to its reporting. CSIS on May 14 said energy self-sufficiency is 4.2 percent, with a 140-day crude storage buffer but only 12 days of gas. In 2024 about 70 percent of crude and 34 percent of liquefied gas came from the Middle East, mainly Qatar, and Qatar and Australia were each about one-third of gas imports in 2025. The coal reserve was 40 days against a statutory 30 per CSIS. IFRI wrote on April 17 that Middle East hydrocarbons were 16 percent of Taiwan's electricity generation in 2025 and that more than 80 percent of the helium the chip industry needs is imported from the region. The IFRI memo is cited here from its summary page.
The conflicts: the import share is 95 percent in one source and 96 in another, and the gas reserve is 11 days, or 12 in the CSIS count, though the EIA, citing the economics ministry, gives 10 to 11 days. On Qatar, Kuomintang caucus secretary-general Lin Pei-hsiang said 25 percent in the legislature on March 3, while the Council and CSIS put it at about a third. The Middle East share is 38 percent in one source and 34 percent in 2024 in another. These measure different things, such as Qatar alone against the Middle East, 2024 against 2025, supply against imports, so each is stated with its source.
On Tuesday, March 3, 2026, Economic Affairs Minister Kung Ming-hsin told the legislature that there would be no power rationing due to an LNG shortage. First-half March shipments had already cleared Hormuz, second-half supplies were secured from other markets and non-gas backup units were available. In a long blockade Taiwan would look to Australia and the United States and could discuss mutual assistance with Japan and South Korea. Coal-fired plant restarts would be a last resort, and electricity price changes would go through the review committee. Premier Cho said Lai was briefed the day after the war began and the ministry would activate an emergency mechanism.
The cost came later. Bloomberg reported on May 8 that "not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal" in Kaohsiung "since early March." Taiwan was paying more than double long-term contract prices on the spot market, and the government said gas was secured until July. Deputy Director General Chen Chung-hsien of the Energy Administration said Taiwan aims for energy self-sufficiency by 2034: "We need our own energy." CSIS puts the added cost of spot cargoes at $620 million as the ministry decided to hold down electricity prices, and says CPC negotiated mutual assistance with Japanese and South Korean buyers. By the CSIS count, roughly two months into the war about 60 percent of Taiwan's crude came from the United States, against 70 percent from the Middle East in 2024, and the plan is for American gas to reach 25 percent of supply by 2029 from about 10 percent in 2025. IFRI expects a pivot toward American gas, a nuclear revival and temporary coal use to stabilize prices, with renewables "not currently benefiting from the same momentum." The Atlantic Council warned that electricity demand in July can run up to 40 percent above February, so an extended shutdown could cause "large energy price spikes or even power rationing."
TSMC uses 9 percent of Taiwan's electricity, expected to reach 15 percent around 2030, per CSIS. The Bloomberg piece says chipmaking used more than 42 billion kilowatt-hours in 2025, about 18 percent of the total, and that smaller firms fear Taipower would ring-fence the chip industry in an outage. Taipower said it "treats all industrial electricity needs equally" and does not prioritize semiconductors, and TSMC declined comment. The two figures, 9 percent for TSMC alone and about 18 percent for the whole sector, are different scopes. The Asian Development Bank projected 2026 growth of about 7.6 percent, per Bloomberg, and retired Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery said, "your GDP has been growing aggressively for 20 years, and it's just hard for your grid to keep up."
Bloomberg's framing is that the suspension "has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade," and that per think-tank war games a maritime blockade "could exhaust Taiwan's energy within weeks." The "within weeks" figure is Bloomberg's paraphrase of unnamed war games. CSIS's own list of Chinese options is quarantine, blockade, and cyber or kinetic strikes on the grid, and it notes that Beijing claims it can guarantee energy security "if Taiwan gives up its sovereignty." On the island's own politics, six of the 15 referendum topics since 2018 have been about energy, per CSIS.