Senate to include measure blocking Trump's ZTE deal in defense bill
Source: The Washington Post
By Karoun Demirjian
June 11 at 8:42 PM
The Senate plans to challenge President Trump’s pledge to lift certain restrictions against Chinese telecom giant ZTE by including a measure in the annual defense bill that would effectively block the deal from being implemented.
The bipartisan amendment would reimpose penalties on ZTE for violating U.S. sanctions against exporting to Iran and North Korea that the Trump administration sought to lift in exchange for the company paying a $1 billion fine and funding an in-house compliance team of U.S. officials. It would also ban U.S. government agencies from purchasing any devices or services from ZTE or Huawei, another major Chinese telecom firm, or using government loans to subsidize any subsidiaries or affiliates of the two companies.
“It’s only prudent that no one in the federal government use their equipment or services and that they receive no taxpayer dollars,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the chief authors of the amendment. “Given their repeated violations of U.S. law, we cannot trust them to respect U.S. national security, and so it’s vital we hold them accountable and pass this amendment.”
Trump has come under scathing criticism from members of his own party, who viewed the president’s efforts to help ZTE as anathema, both economically and in terms of national security.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/senate-to-include-measure-blocking-trumps-zte-deal-in-annual-defense-bill/2018/06/11/68300da0-6dc6-11e8-bd50-b80389a4e569_story.html
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