Well, it has certainly taken a long time for the Justice Department to catch up with Huawei. You will remember that the Iran sanctions violations were first discovered in 2016. In that case, ZTE directions for avoiding US sanctions were published along with the sanctions. I had more information on this in my last book.
For reasons we will never know, the Trump Administration let ZTE off the hook because "too many Chinese jobs would be lost", an interesting reason if I ever heard one. ZTE has long settled on that case, but there was more than one company involved and the Obama Administration never named the second one. It was always thought to be Huawei.
Now there is something going on. As described in the Wall Street Journal, the CFO of Huawei has been arrested in Canada on a request from the USA. It appears Iran had business deals that used Iranian employees to cover some of the movements. ZTE had similar business dealings that led to their sanctions. It takes forever to get the Justice Department involved, but once they do there is enough there to get the case to court. This will be high drama because of the front companies, slight of hand, and financial deals that cloud this whole thing. But, it will be fun to watch.
Today, there seems to be a lot of concern over the effect of this arrest in the midst of trade negotiations. I doubt that it will be any impact. Law Enforcement has to arrest a person when they can reasonably believe that person will be available for extradition, generally true with Canada. Had she been in Moscow, it probably wouldn't have happened. It took weeks for the Administration to decide ZTE would be hurt (Xi would be hurt by this because he was tied closely to ZTE) and let them go. This will work out the same.
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