We've spent a decent amount of time here covering
telecom news out of
China. Back in April, the US Commerce Department barred all US comanies from exporting to China's ZTE for seven years, citing a violation of a 2017 settlement. At the time, David Laufman, a former Justice Department official told
The Washington Post that the ruling "in the near and medium term, it's going to be extremely damaging to ZTE."
Since then, the
Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration had reached a tentative agreement to revive ZTE, possibly lifting the sanctions on the company. Trump, however, refuted the newspaper's claim.
"This is a company that poses a national security threat," Warner told CNBC. "And if that threat is real, and we're going to listen to the intelligence community, this is a company that has violated American sanctions rules.
"For [Trump] to arbitrarily, depending on which day ... he wants to tweet, to decide whether this ought to have the kind of sanctions that the law implied or is he going to arbitrarily choose another route, I find that very dangerous. And not the way we want to send a message ... to a country like China."