Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign wasted no time before going on the attack on New Year’s Day, pointing out that while President Biden is vacationing in the Caribbean, China is promising to upend global stability.

According to the Trump campaign, Biden’s holiday plans are sending a clear signal to U.S. enemies, and it’s not a good one.

“As Joe Biden lounged in St. Croix, Chinese President Xi Jinping threatened Taiwan,” Make America Great Again, Inc., declared in campaign messages.

The Trump campaign’s assertion comes after a New Year’s address given Sunday by Xi, in which the Chinese Communist Party leader said that the taking of the independently governed Pacific island nation isn’t a question of if, but when.

“The reunification of the motherland is a historical inevitability,” Xi said, according to interpreters. “China will surely be reunified, and all Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should be bound by a common sense of purpose and share in the glory of the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

Tensions have been building around Washington’s relationship with Taiwan for years: the Chinese government issued threats after former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Taiwanese leaders last spring and demanded former Speaker Nancy Pelosi cancel a trip there in 2022. Pelosi completed the trip. China responded by restarting military maneuvers near the island.

A pending election in Taiwan scheduled for Jan. 13, in which the leading candidate, Vice President Lai Ching-te, is an outspoken critic of Beijing, has only added fuel to the fire. Lai defended Taiwan’s right to self governance during a debate held Saturday, after which a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office labeled him a “destroyer of peace.”

For more than four decades American diplomats and presidents have tried to maintain a delicate balancing act — known as “strategic ambiguity” — when it comes to Taiwan, despite ongoing assertions by the authoritarian Chinese government that the territory and its 27 million citizens belong under the control of Beijing.

Under the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. government does not maintain any defense treaty with the Taiwanese government, but does provide access to military equipment and conduct trade. At the same time, National Security Council Spokesman Adm. John Kirby said as recently as December that the U.S. does not “support independence for Taiwan” but neither does Washington wish to see a “change in the status quo unilaterally and certainly not one by force.”

The idea, according to diplomats, is to leave the Chinese government guessing as to whether the U.S. military would be genuinely committed to defending the island nation in the event of an invasion, therefore avoiding outright conflict.

Taiwan has been governed independently since 1949 and, in addition to producing the mass of the world’s semiconductors, the island is seen as a potentially strategic point in the Pacific Ocean from which to launch naval operations.

If the Chinese did take Taiwan, as Xi is apparently promising his constituents, according to experts the resulting impact to the global economy would be far worse than the severe consequences seen after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We find that the scale of economic activity at risk of disruption from a conflict in the Taiwan Strait is immense: well over two trillion dollars in a blockade scenario, even before factoring in international responses or second-order effects. The disruptions would be felt immediately and would be difficult to reverse. They would impact trade and investment on a global scale,” researchers for New York policy firm the Rhodium Group wrote in December.

In September, Trump said he wouldn’t take the idea of sending U.S. troops to defend Taiwan “off the table” but was also indicated he might not respond to Chinese aggression there, suggesting he would maintain the longstanding policy of ambiguity.

Biden’s policies — and, apparently, his holiday in the Caribbean — certainly aren’t making things any better, according to Trump’s campaign.

“Biden’s weakness continues to invite aggression,” they wrote.