Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, in his re­turn to the White House, has demon­strat­ed greater am­biva­lence to­ward Tai­wan, an ap­proach that’s rais­ing ques­tions ahead of this week’s sum­mit with Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping about whether the U.S. leader could be open to di­alling back sup­port for the is­land democ­ra­cy that Bei­jing views as its break­away province.

Trump in De­cem­ber au­tho­rized an $11 bil­lion arms pack­age for Tai­wan — the largest weapons sale ever to the is­land — but has not yet moved for­ward with de­liv­ery and even ac­knowl­edged that he’s dis­cussed the sale with Xi. He’s groused that Tai­wan “stole” Amer­i­ca’s semi­con­duc­tor busi­ness and called on Tai­wan to pay the U.S. for pro­tec­tion.

All the while, Trump has, with the threat of hefty tar­iffs, prod­ded Taipei to agree to mas­sive in­vest­ments in U.S. semi­con­duc­tor man­u­fac­tur­ing and to pur­chase bil­lions of dol­lars’ worth of U.S. liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas and crude oil.