Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao told Senate appropriators Thursday that the Pentagon is holding off on foreign military sales, including a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan, to preserve munitions stockpiles for the ongoing conflict with Iran. The admission directly contradicts President Trump's own framing of the Taiwan deal as a diplomatic bargaining chip with Beijing, and it raises hard questions about whether America's arsenal is stretched thinner than administration officials want to acknowledge.
The testimony, reported by The Hill, came during a Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee hearing where Republican hawks pressed Cao and Navy Chief of Operations Admiral Daryl Caudle on the status of the stalled Taiwan package. The answers they got did not line up with what the president said days earlier.
Trump, returning from a trip to Beijing last week, told reporters the arms sale had been discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping "in great detail." He later told Fox News that arms sales to Taiwan are "a very good negotiating chip" in Washington's dealings with Beijing. On the deal itself, Trump was noncommittal: "We're going to see what happens. I may do it; I may not do it."
Cao offered a different explanation entirely. He told senators the administration is pausing foreign military sales to "make sure we have the munitions we need for Epic Fury", the official name for the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran that began February 28 and entered a tenuous ceasefire in April.
That war burned through thousands of missiles, including nearly all of America's long-range stealth cruise missiles, thousands of Tomahawks, Patriot interceptor missiles, and Precision Strike and ATACMS ground-based missiles. Cao insisted the Pentagon still has "plenty" of missiles and interceptors, but acknowledged the review is ongoing.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, testifying separately to House appropriators last week, took a harder line. He called the munitions concern "foolishly and unhelpfully overstated," adding: "We know exactly what we have. We have plenty of what we need." That confidence sits uneasily beside Cao's candid admission that foreign military sales are on hold precisely because of munitions shortfalls.
Hegseth's leadership at the Pentagon has drawn sustained scrutiny from members of his own party. Senate Republicans have pressed him on personnel decisions and questioned whether the defense secretary's judgment matches the demands of the moment.
Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called the delay on the Taiwan deal "distressing." McConnell has long championed robust defense commitments in the Indo-Pacific, and his choice of words signals more than routine concern from a senior Republican appropriator.
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana went further, directing his frustration at Admiral Caudle during the hearing:
"What more do we have to know, admiral? President Xi has telegraphed his anxiety, his insecurity... We want leverage, we want stability, not a war.... Why don't we just go ahead and sell the weapons to Taiwan that Taiwan wants?"
Caudle did not take the bait. He said such deals "are very complex" and require "a full calculus of all the levers of power that are being negotiated and worked." He added that the United States "definitely wants Taiwan to be as strong as they can be" but declined to get ahead of the administration's decision.
That careful bureaucratic language may satisfy no one. Taiwan's Defense Minister Wellington Koo said last week that his government remains "cautiously optimistic" about the arms purchases, but noted that Taiwanese authorities haven't been formally notified of any hold on the $14 billion deal.
The United States pledged to Taiwan in 1982 that it would not consult Beijing on arms sales to the island. Whether pausing a deal to use it as a "negotiating chip" with Xi constitutes a functional breach of that commitment is a question no one in the administration appears eager to answer.
The paused $14 billion package is separate from an $11 billion arms sale the Trump administration approved in December, described as one of the largest such packages ever. That earlier deal also has not advanced, though the reasons remain murky.
The pattern extends beyond Taiwan. The United States has held off on shipping Tomahawk missiles to Japan, disrupting an order of approximately 400 missiles with deliveries now pushed to March 2028. A delayed arms sale to South Korea has left Seoul hesitant to comment publicly. When allies across the Pacific see their weapons orders stalled, the message lands whether Washington intends it or not.
The broader context of Pentagon decisions to pull thousands of troops from Germany as part of a European posture shift only compounds allied uncertainty about American reliability under the current defense leadership.
Analysts see two forces pulling the administration in the same direction, for now. Evan Sankey of the Cato Institute told The Hill that Trump faces a dual incentive:
"On one hand, Trump wants to keep U.S.-China relations on a constructive path, at least until Xi Jinping visits Washington in September, and on the other hand, there is a munition problem. So if you can delay the sale and/or delay delivery of the order and sort of help both of these issues at the same time, it makes sense."
Sankey called the overlap "kind of like a happy coincidence." That framing is generous. A coincidence that conveniently lets the administration avoid angering Beijing while also avoiding hard questions about depleted arsenals is the kind of coincidence that deserves scrutiny, not a shrug.
Zack Cooper of the American Enterprise Institute offered a blunter assessment of China's leverage. He said the Chinese "might condition Xi Jinping's trip to the U.S. planned for September on Trump not providing arms." Cooper added that Beijing could also condition Defense Secretary Hegseth's scheduled July trip to China on the arms package "either not being announced or being significantly shrunk."
If Cooper's read is correct, the pause isn't a strategic choice, it's a concession extracted before negotiations even begin. That's the opposite of leverage.
The internal turbulence at the Pentagon has not helped. The firing of Navy Secretary John Phelan over shipbuilding disputes earlier this year left the department in transition at the worst possible time, with Cao now serving in an acting capacity during a period of active conflict and strained alliances.
Congress has anticipated a White House supplemental request for over a month. The expected ask: $80 billion to $100 billion to fund the Iran war, with a significant chunk earmarked to backfill the costly and sophisticated weapons already expended.
That request hasn't arrived. Meanwhile, Hegseth says the munitions picture is fine. Cao says the Pentagon is pausing sales to allies because the munitions picture demands it. Both men serve the same president. Both testified to Congress in the same week. Their accounts cannot both be true.
The contradiction matters because it touches the most basic obligation of a wartime government: telling Congress and the public where things stand. If the stockpiles are adequate, there is no munitions rationale for delaying Taiwan's arms. If the stockpiles are strained, then Hegseth's dismissal of the concern as "foolishly overstated" is itself misleading.
Previous episodes of miscommunication within the Pentagon's civilian leadership have already tested congressional patience. Trump himself rebuked Hegseth after the defense secretary scrapped a Poland troop deployment without warning, an incident that underscored the gap between White House intent and Pentagon execution.
China has threatened to bring Taiwan under its control by force if necessary. Beijing has increased military drills around the island. When the Trump administration approved the $11 billion sale in December, China vehemently objected, claiming it would "accelerate the push towards a dangerous and violent situation across the Taiwan Strait."
Now the follow-on $14 billion package sits in limbo. Taiwan's defense minister is putting a brave face on it. Republican senators who have spent careers arguing for a strong Pacific deterrent are publicly frustrated. And the administration is offering two incompatible explanations for the same delay.
The diplomatic calendar ahead is packed with opportunities for Beijing to press its advantage. Xi's September visit to Washington. Hegseth's July trip to China. Each event gives the Chinese government a reason to demand that the arms sale stay frozen, and each delay makes the eventual resumption politically harder.
None of this is happening in a vacuum. The Iran war consumed munitions at a staggering rate. Allies across the Pacific are watching their own orders stall. Congress is waiting on a supplemental funding request that hasn't materialized. And the administration can't get its own witnesses to tell the same story under oath.
When a government can't decide whether it's pausing arms sales for strategic reasons or logistical ones, the likeliest answer is that it hasn't decided at all. Ambiguity may serve diplomats. It does not serve deterrence, and deterrence is what keeps Taiwan free.
