Taiwan’s main opposition parties have cleared special defence budget bill after months of fractious debate and infighting
4-MIN READ4-MIN ListenLawrence Chungin TaipeiPublished: 11:02pm, 11 May 2026Pressure from Washington was likely to have played a decisive role in Taiwan’s opposition parties backing a sharply expanded special defence budget last week, analysts said, as concerns mount in Taipei ahead of a summit between US President Donald Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.
The agreed amount was far above the “NT$380 billion plus N” framework previously favoured by the main opposition party Kuomintang, but still well short of the government’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion package.
The bill was jointly pushed through by the KMT and the smaller opposition Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), which together hold a legislative majority.
The scaled-down package covers US arms sales to Taiwan, but excludes many locally produced weapons and military-industrial programmes championed by the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, including drones, AI-enabled battlefield systems and indigenous missile projects.
