Taiwan's opposition-controlled Legislative Yuan approved around $24.9 billion in extra defense spending, roughly two-thirds of the nearly $40 billion requested by the government of President William Lai, after the Kuomintang and Taiwan People's Party narrowed the package to only U.S. weapons rather than Lai's proposed broader mix of U.S. arms and domestic arms production, the Financial Times reported on May 8. The ruling Democratic Progressive Party criticized the cut as weakening Taiwan's defenses and sending a weak deterrence signal.

The vote follows months of divided government gridlock in which Lai tried to use a special budget to accelerate Taiwan's shift toward asymmetric defense, including bolstered domestic defense industrial capacity, and after Taiwan's baseline 2026 defense spending was already set to rise to about 3.3% of gross domestic product, above 3% for the first time since 2009.