Senators Move to Sink Trump’s ZTE Deal

In a rare rebuke of President Donald Trump, Republican Senate leaders set up a vote for the week of June 11 that would undo the White House deal to revive Chinese telecommunications company ZTE Corp. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was on Capitol Hill late June 11 to lobby against the move. But Democratic and Republican lawmakers said that an agreement had been reached to wrap into the National Defense Authorization Act an amendment that would ban ZTE from buying components from US suppliers.

The Commerce Department in mid-April had banned exports to the company as punishment for breaking a settlement to resolve sanctions-busting sales to North Korea and Iran. In private meetings with Republicans recently, the president argued in favor of the agreement, which saved ZTE by allowing the Chinese company to resume buying components from U.S. suppliers. The Trump administration agreed to lift the ban as part of a larger deal in which ZTE would pay a $1 billion fine and allow US enforcement officers inside the company to monitor its actions. Cutting off access to US components was essentially a death knell for the company.  The defense-authorization bill is a must-pass measure that typically clears Congress with bipartisan support. As a result, language that is tucked in the defense bill is much harder to block than legislation introduced independently or tied to other, less popular bills. Senators predicted that the measure would clear Congress and be signed into law by President Trump because the underlying defense measure contains many popular items. Ultimately, “I would expect that there wouldn’t be a ZTE,” said Sen Tom Cotton (R-AR) “The death penalty is an appropriate punishment for their behavior.”