It took only a few hours after Trump warned Taiwan not to try declaring independence…

…for the Taiwanese foreign ministry to remind that Taiwan is already independent.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te has previously stated that Taiwan does not need to declare formal independence because it already sees itself as a sovereign nation.

On Saturday, presidential spokesperson Karen Kuo said it was “self-evident” that Taiwan was “a sovereign, independent democratic country”.

She added, however, that Taiwan was committed to maintaining the status quo with China - in which Taiwan neither declares independence from China nor unites with it.

Many Taiwanese consider themselves to be part of a separate nation, though most are in favour of maintaining their current status.

As for the actual consequences: in the best case, nothing changes and maybe the US will get a new president soon. Because explaining the depth of the US-Taiwan interdependence to the current president is clearly a too big job.

The US is a client state of Taiwan just as much as Taiwan is a client state of the US. If one gets in trouble, the other also gets in trouble. Actually, most of the world gets in trouble in case of Taiwan, so everyone who needs a device with some CPU or memory has a vested interest in nothing whatsovever happening with regard to Taiwan. And this probably even includes people in mainland China, although I think they can reasonably claim to be almost independent of Taiwan. :) I certainly cannot, I honestly declare considerable dependence on Taiwan. :)