US troops would defend Taiwan from China, Biden says

US President Joe Biden has said the US would defend Taiwan against an attack from China if needed in a surprising elevation of language.

Biden told CBS' 60 Minutes that US forces would respond "if in fact there was an unprecedented attack".

He confirmed this would involve troop deployment, rather than supplying arms.

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White House officials later said the official US policy had not changed, and would not say whether American forces would be called to defend Taiwan.

Biden has made the claim before, but the statements come at an increasingly tense time for US-China relations, particularly after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip there last month.

Beijing sees official American contact with Taiwan as encouragement to make the island's decades-old de facto independence permanent, a step Biden and other US leaders say they don't support.

In the same interview, Biden said the US did not "encourage" Taiwanese independence.

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Biden thought Trump document fiasco 'irresponsible'

Biden, who rarely gives television interviews, touched on a range of topics with 60 Minutes.

Addressing the FBI's seizure of classified documents from predecessor Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort, Biden said he wondered how anybody could be so "irresponsible".

"And I thought, what data was in there that may compromise sources and methods?" he said.

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The president said he did not get a heads-up before the Trump estate was searched, and he has not asked for any specifics "because I don't want to get myself in the middle of whether or not the Justice Department should move or not move on certain actions they could take."

The FBI says it took about 11,000 documents, including roughly 100 with classification markings found in a storage room and an office, while serving a court-authorized search warrant at the home on August 8. Weeks after the search, Trump lawyers asked a judge to appoint a special master to conduct an independent review of the records.

The warrant says federal agents were investigating potential violations of three different federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act.

In the course of the interview, Biden also wouldn't commit to running for reelection in 2024, though he's said in the past that he planned to.

"My intention, as I said to begin with, is that I would run again," he said.

"But it's just an intention. But is it a firm decision that I run again? That remains to be seen."