US President Donald Trump has said he would intervene in the US Justice Department’s case against Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou if it was in the national interest.
Wanzhou was arrested in Canada on December 1 and is facing extradition to the US to answer charges of fraud.
It is alleged that Wanzhou aided Huawei to avoid sanctions on doing business in Iran, which if proven, could have put multinational banking organisations at risk of breaking those sanctions too.
Trump Huawei
She has since been granted bail while she awaits an extradition hearing, a move which may ease tensions between the US and China, but Trump has gone one step further.
“Whatever’s good for this country, I would do,” he said in an interview with Reuters. “If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary.”
Tech has played a significant role in an ongoing trade dispute between the US and China as they seek to strike a deal. Earlier this year telecoms equipment manufacturer ZTE was banned from working with US suppliers for seven years for failing to adhere to the terms of a punishment for breaching sanctions of trading with Iran.
That ruling placed ZTE’s very existence at risk, but intervention from Trump resulted in a settlement that allowed the company to return to business.
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