Donald Trump treated the Chinese leader as a prospective customer for weapons while discussing Taiwan's arms sales. That is the read of the exchange Washington's ambassador to China has now put on the record.

David Perdue, the US ambassador to China, said Trump asked Xi Jinping whether China wanted to buy US weapons. The question came while the two discussed Washington's planned arms sales to Taiwan, according to the account in the Outlook India and Express reports.

The planned sales are the $14 billion package at the centre of the dispute. Trump, in that conversation, asked whether Xi would like a catalogue.

The ambassador's account puts Taiwan's arms and Beijing's shopping list in one sentence, from one president.

The reports carry no answer from Xi. The Chinese side has given none in anything sourced here. Silence from Beijing is not a refusal of the framing, and Beijing has not said it rejects it.

Taipei should read it plainly. A package that can be discussed alongside a sale to its own adversary is a package with a price, and the price is being set in a room Taiwan is not in.

The New Republic reported that Trump's team scrambled over the arms slip. A team scrambles when the ambassador has said out loud what the principal said in private.

The caveat is narrow. Every detail here rests on Perdue's telling, and no readout of the exchange appears in the sourced material. What is on the record is that the American president put weapons sales to China on the table while discussing the planned Taiwan package.

If the read is right, the sale has become part of what Trump is offering Xi, and the Taiwan package will be settled with that in mind.