Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and US President Donald Trump attend a meeting on the sidelines of their visit to the Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing, China. Donald Trump has a message for both sides of the Taiwan Strait: cool it. In an interview with Fox News' Bret Baier that aired Friday, the president laid out a position on Taiwan that was deliberately noncommittal, signalling neither reassurance to Taipei nor a green light to Beijing. "I want Taiwan to cool down, I want China to cool down," Trump said. Baier asked Trump directly whether the people of Taiwan should feel less secure following his meeting with Xi Jinping in China this week. Trump's answer was one word: "Neutral." He followed that up by saying nothing had changed in the US relationship with Taiwan and that the situation had been ongoing for years. It was a carefully constructed non-answer designed to keep both sides guessing. He was more direct on one point though. He said he was not looking for Taiwan to move toward formal independence, which is the scenario Beijing fears most. "We're not looking to have somebody say, 'Let's go independent because the United States is backing us,'" Trump said, adding that the US was not in the business of travelling thousands of miles to fight a war over the issue. "I'm not looking to have someone go independent and we have to travel 9,500 to fight a war," Trump said. When asked whether the US would militarily defend Taiwan if China moved against it, Trump refused to answer. He said only one person knows the answer to that question, and that person is him. He added that Xi had asked him the same thing during their meeting, and he gave the Chinese president the same non-answer. For Taiwan, a president who responds to questions about its security with the word "neutral" is not exactly a ringing endorsement. Whether that ambiguity is strategic or simply reflects Trump's broader approach to foreign policy commitments is the question Taipei will be wrestling with. Sagar is a journalist with an interest primarily in geopolitics and American domestic politics. Before joining Times Now, he wrote for Republic and Sw... View More