
ZTE of China to Pay $1B Fine in Deal to End U.S. Sanctions - kercker
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/business/us-china-zte-deal.html
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devy
You'd be naive to think if ZTE were to go under will be at America's best
interest. U.S. semiconductor industry as a whole will be impacted as ZTE is
one of the largest mobile handset and networking equipment manufacturer.

~~~
silverbax88
Right, because when a supplier for anything that has a massive market goes out
of business, no one has ever come in to serve that market...

~~~
sigmar
Agreed. Their 3% market share would be arbsorded into Xiaomi, Samsung, and
Huawei within months.

~~~
devoply
Imagine assets that could be bought at a discount.

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jorblumesea
I love how we are slapping sanctions on our allies and letting our adversaries
in the backdoor. All the while complaining about IP theft from China. Sad!

~~~
Hasknewbie
Exactly this. It's insane that the US is threatening EU companies for
(currently, legally) doing business in Iran, while at the same time letting
ZTE get away with, well, having done the same thing (except illegally, when
the sanctions were still in place). And all of that to save "many jobs"... in
China.

~~~
adventured
ZTE didn't get away with anything. The US action against them nearly destroyed
the company and they've been fined $2.2 billion.

As of right now, if all the US has done is threaten sanctions on EU companies,
then it's ZTE that has received the dramatically worse outcome.

~~~
Hasknewbie
ZTE objectively got punished with _a lot less_ than what was meant. They got
away with a lot, while the US chickened out. And EU companies will lose _a lot
more_ than a billion (caused by the US breaking an international treaty).

~~~
bluesroo
The US did not break an international treaty. It was a "deal" from Obama,
which he never put in front of the Senate to actually become an international
treaty... Likely because the Senate would not have confirmed it as it was.

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dashundchen
Meanwhile, a Chinese state investment puts $500 million dollars towards an
Indonesian project heavily involving Trump properties, golf courses and
branding.

[https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-
contributing-500-m...](https://www.nationalreview.com/news/china-
contributing-500-million-trump-linked-project-indonesia/)

Peddling influence and using government for personal profit seems par for the
course in this administration.

[https://www.salon.com/2018/05/16/trumps-bizarre-zte-
tweets-p...](https://www.salon.com/2018/05/16/trumps-bizarre-zte-tweets-
payback-for-a-huge-real-estate-deal-in-indonesia/)

~~~
genericone
China knows how to play the game. They know that their investment won't stay
under wraps... so I don't see how this would benefit Trump. Could the trump
organization have rejected China's investment into the Indonesian state
project if they wanted to stay clean? Or would that require dropping out of
the entire project completely, and what would the contract violation terms
have entailed if they were as major a part of that project as it seems? Would
the contract violation agreement result in greater than 500M losses? There are
very interesting political games afoot.

~~~
mikeash
All of your questions demonstrate why the President should never be in that
situation in the first place. That Trump wasn’t instantaneously impeached for
enormous ongoing conflicts of interest is a stain on Congressional leadership.

~~~
genericone
Very true, could you imagine the political implications if the Trump
organization DID reject the Chinese investment into an Indonesian state
project? If acceptance of money is, ipso facto, a sign of political
corruption, then would blocking the exchange of money between 2 sovereign
nations be considered meddling in foreign economies? What intentions could be
read from an act of rejection? How much of the invested money would have
actually reached the Trump organization? The Trump organization is far too
tied to the Trump presidency for comfort. But this has been true of the
Clinton foundation during Bill and Barack's terms as well.

As an aside, the president should first and foremost, represent the nation's
best interests. But I can't determine what Trump holds in higher regard, the
office of the president, or himself. I imagine most people think being
president of the US would be the highest position in the world. For any
politician at least, US or foreign, the top of their food chain is the US
President. But how does a billionaire like Bezos, with a business and news-
media empire, view being president? Does someone like that look down or up?
What I mean is, would and should a billionaire 'play' president the same way a
politician would 'play' president? My imagination is that a billionaire would
want to become president in order to use the office to accomplish political
goals not possible simply with money, versus a career politician who might
simply see the US Presidency as a goal in itself. At the end of the day, both
want to see their desired outcomes come to fruition, both want to be in a
position of governmental power to make their wants happen. Which one is better
for the nation?

~~~
mikeash
I don’t understand what you’re saying about what Clinton Foundation. It wasn’t
formed until after Bill left office and as far as I know Obama wasn’t
involved. The worst Obama did was have a book people could buy.

~~~
genericone
I had to look it up since I didn't know enough about it, but it looks like the
Clinton Foundation was set up in 1997, at the beginning of Bill's 2nd term. As
for mentioning Obama's term, what I meant by that was that since Hillary was
Secretary of State at the time, there's definite potential for conflict of
interest. I used wikipedia for my info.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Foundation)

~~~
mikeash
From that article: “The origins of the foundation go back to 1997, when then-
president Bill Clinton was focused mostly on fundraising for the future
Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas. He founded the William
J. Clinton Foundation in 2001 following the completion of his presidency.”

~~~
genericone
Whether its a charity/fundraiser/guest-lecture/business-deal, I imagine it
still works the same way, regardless of the stated focus or purpose of said
thing: Money goes in, Influence comes out (or Favor_B in exchange for
Favor_A). I have neither money nor influence, and the favors I can grant are
minuscule, so I can't tell you what ratio of Money:Influence works for
powerful people, but I can at least say that they are not inversely
proportional. The more you give, the higher your surface area becomes to
receive something and the more offended you can act if you don't receive
something quid pro quo.

~~~
candiodari
Here's one thing the public purse gave to the Clinton foundation:

[https://nypost.com/2016/10/02/bill-clintons-executive-
suite-...](https://nypost.com/2016/10/02/bill-clintons-executive-suite-is-a-
private-pad-above-165m-library/)

(Of course the real power behind money isn't the money itself, the ownership,
but the power to use it. So for taxpayer's money, the power comes from the
mayor, governor or president and to a lesser extent congress/senate and their
lower level equivalents. For companies the power behind the money is
management/directors/CEO, and to a (much) lesser extent shareholders. So one
should always make the distinction between ownership and the ability to
control something. The control is much better than ownership, for one thing,
control is not taxed)

And before you say "but that's the president". Well we know about Bill
Clinton, don't we. He's the sort of man that forces people in his employ to
service him sexually. So clearly, he's the sort of guy that takes "one service
for another" pretty damn (in fact illegally) far.

Now you can say "but Bush, and Obama (and even Trump) are better than that".
Perhaps, but first, not likely, and secondly even if it's just the one, the
results will be similar, perhaps a bit more limited in time at best.

One wonders just what level of favor that buys, but it must have been ... well
let's say at least $20 million worth of favor. If you can put a price on it at
all, as this is a property that doesn't get taxed, even gets maintained and
serviced by the government for free and normally wouldn't be available at all.
So that price is the cost price of this thing, actually buying this as a
private individual would have been at the very least 10 times that.

~~~
mikeash
What do you mean, “the public purse”? That was funded entirely with donations.

~~~
candiodari
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Presidential_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clinton_Presidential_Center)

So $165 million, firstly $11.5 million directly from the local government, >
10% from foreign governments, and several high 6 figure "donations" from
people he pardoned (on top of those people paying "consultation fees" to close
family members of the Clintons).

I probably should have said "by the public purse, among others".

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martythemaniak
Trump's flipping around shouldn't be that surprising, but the wholesale
abandonment or banishment of any independent thought from the Republican party
is quite a (terrible) thing to behold.

They claimed they were for "law and order" but the stand firm behind a
criminal and want to take down the FBI and other agencies.

They were for standing up to tinpot dictators, but are now fighting over who
can suck up to Kim the best.

They claimed they were for free trade and smooth business, but are now working
hard to wreck the Western alliance.

And let's not even try to get into the whole "family values" scam...

~~~
drak0n1c
I suppose one man's successful negotiation is another man's reason to launch
into a digressive rant.

~~~
martythemaniak
And I suppose one man's "successful negotiation" is another man's "fragile
egomaniac taken advantage of again".

Much like his inaugural Carrier "negotiation", these things tend to fluff his
ego, benefit the other party and somehow leave everyone else worse off.

~~~
throwaway7312
Ever notice how Republican presidents are always portrayed by partisan
liberals as blithering idiots (Bush II as a religious fundamentalist warmonger
dunce; Trump as an narcissistic ADD loose cannon dunce)?

And how Democrat presidents are always portrayed by partisan conservatives as
morally corrupt degenerates (Clinton as a murdering, philandering drug
kingpin; Obama as a Kenyan-born Muslim homosexual on globalist puppet
strings)?

Usually I just assume this is confirmation bias + partisans being partisan.

But sometimes I like to wonder, "What if it's all true?"

~~~
chillwaves
Trump has confirmed himself that he does not read. Not books, not the news. It
is widely reported by his own cabinet the man does not pay attention or have
the depth of understanding of well, anything.

The thing about Obama being a muslim homosexual is fucking stupid and not
worth responding to.

~~~
cmurf
What about 5 years pushing the racist lie that was birtherism? That his
supporters didn't care, or they liked it?

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prklmn
“Too many jobs in China lost” - Xi’s waterboy and president of the USA

~~~
spoiledtechie
1.4 Billion in penalties. I don't see any other President of the USA doing
that. Its a WIN for us.

~~~
ntnn
... the US armed forces are spending roughly 2b every day (~590b in 2015,
proposed ~680b in 2019). That penalty is a drop on a hot stone. That's not a
"WIN".

~~~
kansface
Why is the budget of the US armed forces the point of comparison here?

~~~
everybodyknows
Because ZTE is a prime instrument of PRC hegemonic ambitions, and $1B is a
bargain to put such an asset back on line.

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djrogers
So the outcome here is:

\- All key leadership and board memebers are to be fired and replaced within
30 days

\- US picked compliance team embedded in ZTE that the commerce department is
reimbursed for by ZTE

\- $1B fine and $400M in escrow

\- Qualcomm / NXP deal seems likely to be approved, helping US jobs

In the past we've seen other countries deal with Iran while under sanctions,
and we've gotten nothing out of them other than speeches at the U.N.

I kinda think I like this better.

 _oblig disclaimer - I didn 't vote for Trump, and I don't knee-jerk defend
his actions..._

~~~
ejstronge
> In the past we've seen other countries deal with Iran while under sanctions,
> and we've gotten nothing out of them other than speeches at the U.N.

> I kinda think I like this better.

I think this is immensely unfair - you cite one deal that got a lot of press
due to a series of unexpected about-faces in the US position. There’s no
reason to believe that agreements of this nature are made but not publicized.

Also, I'm not sure I understand how this action relates to the sanctions
placed on Iran. What is your reasoning?

~~~
djrogers
I used the term sanctions in the broad sense when I could have used a more
specific term, but I was referring to the trade and technology transfer
restrictions (which fall under the generic umbrella of sanctions) that ZTE
violated.

