Is it a sop to American high-tech companies that were suppliers to the Chinese telecomm giant?
Is it negotiating tactics regarding other Chinese trade kerfuffles?
Is it that the original charges against ZTE were filed during the Obama Administration, so Trump thinks this is more dismantling of the Obama legacy?
Because, frankly, tweeting “Too many jobs in China lost” seems kind of weird from the America First president, especially since ZTE got slammed in the first place for violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea, tools that Trump has repeatedly relied upon, doubled down on, and generally treated as acts of paramount national interest.
Now he seems to be saying, “Yeah, we need to impose new sanctions on Iran, and even take action against our allies if we’re not happy with how they follow suit, unless, of course, they’re a giant Chinese company, in which case we’ll roll back any punishment for violating sanctions.”
It’s still a head-scratcher.
President Trump Puts ‘America First’ On Hold To Save Chinese Jobs : The Two-Way : NPR
Maybe he's asking ZTE for a bribe.
In other amusing news, after Trump assured ZTE and China and everyone else that regarding helping ZTE, "Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!", the White House "officially" said that Commerce would be (re)examining the ZTE situation "independently".
Angling for a Trump Tower Beijing?
Standard-issue global corporatism.
The discussion would have been more elevated if the command to Commerce was "Git 'er done!" Larry the Cable Guy, while a little bit of fake news himself (news flash: the accent is fake), at least displays a level of consistency that is entirely…um, foreign to Trump. Once a (cash-flush) labor union complains, Trump will be back to promoting American jobs within a week.
I've been reading a couple of books that covered, at least in part, the Ford Administration over the last few days (James Cannon's An Honorable Life, Dick Cheney's autobiography), and remembered the story of Ronald Reagan's naming of Richard Schweiker as his 1976 running mate. This shattered Reagan's 1976 hopes among certain conservatives, who regarded Schweiker as a liberal and Reagan's nomination of him a betrayal.
Somehow Trump has the skills to prevent his zig zags from bringing him down. An adulterer[1] with evangelical support, a "drain the swamp" guy surrounded by and doing the bidding of Wall Streeters, a man who changes foreign policy positions almost weekly, he's able to implement a protectionist policy, then state that he's overruling his own policy to preserve Chinese jobs (and subsequently say "maybe not").
(Then again, the Democrats aren't necessarily a model of consistency either. How many of them were stridently warning about the evils of Russia in the years before 2016?)
= = =
[1] Even if every single charge against Trump is false, from a Sermon on the Mount perspective (Matthew 5:31-32) the fact that Trump has divorced twice (and not because of Ivana's or Marla's lack of faithfulness) makes him an adulterer by Jesus' standards.
Aha! I was right! China just approved funding for a big Trump branded project.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-contributing-500-million-trump-linked-project-indonesia/
Like I said.