So, he has repeatedly said that Taiwan is part of China, has called for reunification, has (now) gained a spot on the cabinet of the president elect, and he's asking his suppliers in Taiwan to get out of the country for geopolitical reasons.

I'm not sure how much clearer this picture could be.

Yep, the signs are plain. Taiwan is toast so far as the incoming US administration is concerned.

What do you think they are planning to gain out of the deal? They will sell the abandonment of Taiwan's democracy to totalitarianism with some crap about America getting out of the forever war business, but Trump/Musk would know that Taiwan is a hugely valuable bargaining chip that you could get a lot for by not defending it.

Money/power, one would assume. Musk has his cars made in China, so he'd be looking for long-term stability, market access, but what is Trump's motivation?

He's all talk about tariffs on China products (presumably not including Tesla), but that's purely business related, nothing to do with any moral stance on Taiwan. Is it the chip industry he's after? How would handing China control of Taiwan help that? America would like to develop its own, be self-sufficient, but that's a ways off, right? (Read a figure saying it's currently around 12% of integrated circuit manufacturing. Don't know how accurate that is.)

Trump would be thinking reward in his term. There must be some interim pay-off involved.

On another point, it's always eyebrow-raising when you hear about Vietnam being touted as the new manufacturing hub. Vietnam is another country run by a ruthless totalitarian regime. It's hard to escape the conclusion that if you're a Globo-player from the west, you like doing business with totalitarian regimes - there are less moving parts. The fact that it's idiotic to keep handing over your supply chain to totalitarian orgs, never seems to get addressed. I guess the thing is that it makes financial/power sense to the Musk-types, but it's a disaster for the poor old normal person.