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Trump Defends ZTE Concession After Sparking Bipartisan Rebuke

51 points| Ihmahr | 7 years ago |bloomberg.com

43 comments

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r00fus|7 years ago

How is this not pure corruption? How is it legal?

Do we live in a banana republic?

simcop2387|7 years ago

I've seen it argued that it is illegal, a direct violation of the emoluments clause of the constitution. I'm not a lawyer, let along a constitutional one, so I can't say that with any authority, but everything about it certainly screams that it is a violation. And it certainly does seem like we're moving towards (if not already being there) a banana republic.

maxerickson|7 years ago

Never let a good tax cut go to waste. Or something like that anyway.

berberous|7 years ago

Forcing a company that employees 75,000 people in China out of business doesn't seem like the right outcome. I would expect the U.S. and China to negotiate some sort of more appropriate remedy that is better for all sides.

bryant|7 years ago

It was the huffington post which first pointed out the timing of Trump's ZTE concessions relative to a Trump Organization-affiliated project the Chinese government agreed to finance.

Financing article: http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/2145808...

HuffPo correlation story: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-china-zte_us_5af9...

This is not to say that the two are necessarily connected so much as it's to say that not investigating the timing of the two is to exhibit a lack of due diligence.

wyldfire|7 years ago

> This is not to say that the two are necessarily connected so much as it's to say that not investigating the timing of the two is to exhibit a lack of due diligence.

They don't even have to be connected with any explicit quid pro quo between the parties. It could all be implicit from the Chinese government knowing full well who the owner of the Trump Organization is.

Trump had a recourse, he could have easily put his assets in a blind trust. Instead, he should suffer the consequences.

throwaway84742|7 years ago

Trade negotiations are underway. This is a part of that, as was the initial ban. Trump does this again and again: he creates leverage in the form of negative consequences should he walk away from the table. Then he gives some of it back much to the relief of the other side, in exchange for something else he needs. He negotiated thousands of deals, some of which were very complicated. It could well be that he’s the strongest negotiator we ever had in that position.

cthalupa|7 years ago

>It could well be that he’s the strongest negotiator we ever had in that position.

So strong that he can't negotiate deals beneficial enough for him that he can afford to hold up his end of them, and instead files for bankruptcy so that he doesn't have to pay for it. He's taken such good care of all of the hard working US citizens he's interacted with in his days as a business man.

mttyng|7 years ago

What deals? What complications?