A former Pentagon official says a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan is still pending but serves America's own interests, even as Trump and Xi Jinping plan two more meetings this year.

• Trump and Xi are set to meet again in November at APEC in China and in December at the G20 in Florida, following summits earlier this year in Beijing and Washington.
• Randall Schriver, a former senior Pentagon official for Indo-Pacific security, says frequent leader-to-leader contact has kept US-China relations somewhat stable, though Taiwan remains a major point of disagreement.
• Trump has called the Taiwan arms sale a bargaining chip, but Schriver argues the US has a legal duty to help Taiwan defend itself and expects the sale to move forward eventually.
• China keeps raising the Taiwan issue at every opportunity, and Schriver wants US officials to keep standing firm on supporting Taiwan and pushing China to stop pressuring and provoking it.
• Schriver calls the current calm a temporary "pause" likely to last only around six months, not a real fix, and says the actual results from this year's two Trump-Xi summits have been thin since the two countries still compete on most issues.

Outlook: The arms sale may stay stalled until after Trump's two more meetings with Xi this year, and the US-China truce could start fraying again within months unless the US makes real progress cutting its reliance on Chinese rare earths and critical minerals.