Trump approves deal to save China’s ZTE

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump handed the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE a lifeline Thursday, agreeing to lift tough U.S. sanctions over the objections of Republican lawmakers, his defense advisers and some of his economic officials.

The deal will help defuse tensions with the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who personally asked Trump to intervene to save ZTE and whom Trump has relied on to help pave the way for next week’s summit meeting with the North Korean leader.

The Commerce Department said ZTE has agreed to pay a $1 billion fine, replace its board and senior leadership, and allow the United States to more closely inspect the company by effectively having a handpicked compliance team embedded in the firm. The United States would then lift a seven-year ban that prevented the company from buying U.S. products and was quickly driving it out of business.

However, the settlement has inflamed lawmakers, including top Republicans, who objected to helping a Chinese company that broke U.S. law and has been accused of posing a national-security threat. It also puts the United States in an awkward position as it punishes allies such as Canada, Mexico and the European Union with stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum, and insists that countries in Europe and elsewhere abide by U.S. sanctions on Iran.

In 2016, the United States found the Chinese company guilty of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea. In April, the government said ZTE had failed to take the necessary actions to rectify the issue and had lied about its efforts, prompting the Commerce Department to implement the ban. Defense officials have also repeatedly expressed concern about the risk that ZTE’s equipment could pose to national security.

Lawmakers moved swiftly to try to scuttle the agreement Thursday as a bipartisan group of senators introduced an amendment that would automatically reinstate ZTE’s ban on buying U.S. products until the president certified to Congress that the company had met certain conditions.

“I assure you with 100% confidence that ZTE is a much greater nationalsecurity threat than steel from Argentina or Europe,” Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who supported the amendment, wrote on Twitter on Thursday.