TAIPEI -- U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff policy has turned up the heat on governments around the world, and Taiwan is no exception. Yet for Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te, there is a fundamental question of values, and the answer is to focus on building a supply chain for democracies.
"Over the past few decades, the free economy headed by the Western world and led by the United States has brought economic prosperity and political stability" to Taiwan and elsewhere, Lai told Nikkei Editor-in-Chief Hiroshi Yamazaki in his first foreign media interview of the year. But he said not all countries have been "exemplary students" of this system.
