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The United States Senate has passed an amendment that reinstates the ban on Chinese telecoms concern ZTE doing business with US-based companies.
President Trump said he’d secured a reversal of the ban as a personal favour to Chinese president Xi Jinping in the hope that the show of good faith would ease trade negotiations between the two nations. ZTE was banned from dealing with US firms for flouting laws about exporting to Iran and North Korea. The ban cut ZTE off from critical component-makers like Qualcomm and led to it shuttering production lines and resellers dumping its products.
Trump's plan to have his friendship with Xi ease tensions appears not to have worked, in the short term at least, because the Trump administration today issued a statement that said “China apparently has no intention of changing its unfair practices related to the acquisition of American intellectual property and technology” and therefore threatening tariffs on US$200bn of Chinese goods.
The threat came after Trump last week announced tariffs on $50bn of Chinese goods, sparking retaliatory tariffs on about $35bn of US-made goods from China.
All of which doesn’t look like that personal favour worked out as planned.
Back to the ZTE vote, as it saw US Senators from both sides of politics decry the removal of the ban on grounds of national security. A joint statement from senior Republican and Democratic senators read: “We're heartened that both parties made it clear that protecting American jobs and national security must come first when making deals with countries like China, which has a history of having little regard for either. It is vital that our colleagues in the House keep this bipartisan provision in the bill as it heads towards a conference.”
And there’s the rub, because the US House of Representatives has passed a version of the same bill without the ZTE ban. Reconciling the bill may yet see ZTE given a lifeline, although the Senate vote passed 85 votes to 10 so there’s clearly not much will for a reversal.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday June 20 2018, @02:35PM (1 child)
Well, now, Ilpapa, or Lilpapa, or whatever - I would appreciate you pointing out exactly where I "apologized" for being American. Didn't happen, did it? What I said was, we have plenty of evil sumbitches to go around, right here in America. The bastards climbed to the top of a dog-eat-dog world, because they are heartless, cruel, uncaring, and just plain greedy. And, those top dogs shit on EVERYONE - you, me, Syrians, Iraqi, Iranian, Chinese - it doesn't matter to them.
But, I'm not apologizing to anyone for any of that. No apologies necessary. Seriously, none. All that need be done, is to stir up the villagers with their torches and pitchforks. And, after the big housecleaning, we start enforcing sensible laws.
If you want to see apologies, you can browse some of Obama's speeches. Dude was kissing ass, prostrating himself, and apologizing all over the world when he was president.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Wednesday June 20 2018, @04:23PM
Have you purchased your commemorative framed photo of Kim Jong Un? They're selling them at trump.org. I hear Communist dictators are very popular this year with American conservatives.
You are still welcome on my lawn.