Don on China: $weet & $our

A tale of two tweets

President Trump in two tweets on Sunday said he is working with leader China’s leader Xi Jinping to save a telecommunications company there from folding — then blasted Beijing for taking advantage of the United States in previous trade deals.

“President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast,” Trump first wrote about the company. “Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

He returned to the topic more than five hours later and suggested that China wasn’t interested in negotiating a fair deal.

“China and the United States are working well together on trade, but past negotiations have been so one sided in favor of China, for so many years, that it is hard for them to make a deal that benefits both countries,” he wrote in the second posting.

“But be cool, it will all work out!” he concluded.

Following Trump’s tweets, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer mocked the president’s plan to save jobs at the Chinese company.

“How about helping some American companies first?” the New York Democrat wrote on his Twitter account.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) raised national-security concerns posed by ZTE.

“Our intelligence agencies have warned that ZTE technology and phones pose a major cyber secu- rity threat,” he said on Twitter. “You should care more about our national security than Chinese jobs.”

Washington last month banned US companies from doing business with ZTE, the fourth-largest mobile-phone provider in the United States, for seven years because it violated sanctions against doing business with North Korea and Iran.

The company, which relies heavily on imports of components made in the United States and which has about 75,000 workers, appealed the order to the Commerce Department, arguing that the ban could force it out of business.

The telecom firm said it had shut down “the major operating activities of the company.”

The United States decided on the ban after ZTE, which paid a $1.2 billion fine in the case, lied to regulators about disciplining employees involved and instead paid them bonuses.

Trump’s apparent concession comes amid rising trade tensions between the two countries and days before representatives of the Trump administration are expected to meet with Liu He, one of Xi’s top economic advisers, in Washington.

A contingent of US officials, led by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, traveled to Beijing earlier this month to try to calm fears of an impending trade war.

Trump has called for putting tariffs on $150 billion worth of Chinese goods, and China has retaliated in kind.