House Appropriations Committee unanimously votes to keep the ZTE ban intact despite Trump’s opinion

On the last month, the United States Department of Commerce dropped its hammer against the Chinese company, ZTE, for violating terms of a sanction imposed over the commerce with Iran. The US Committee banned ZTE from doing business with all hardware and software related companies that are originated from the US, this basically made ZTE unable to use Qualcomm hardware and Google’s Android Software.

Without access to the U.S Software, hardware and components, the Chinese phone maker had to basically shut its doors and stop all their operations in the smartphone segment and technology. Surprisingly, after having made many comments about how China steals U.S jobs, the United States President Mr. Donal Trump showed an unusual concern with ZTE situation, and all those people in China losing their jobs due to the company’s sudden ending of business.

Fearing a possible intervention in the case, the House Appropriations Committee unanimously passed an amendment to a bill that prevents Commerce Department from changing the sanctions imposed to ZTE on the last month, that includes the US export ban that will end only in 2025. ZTE has violated US sanctions by selling goods and services to Iran. After having paid a huge fine, the company was told by the Commerce Department to withhold bonuses and write reprimands to those involved with the violation. Surprisingly, ZTE failed to honor this agreement, thus receiving the ban as consequence.

“Supporting this amendment will show that the U.S. government stands behind the sanctions that it enacts, and will enforce them. It also further prevents foreign companies beholden to their governments from further infiltrating our U.S. networks.”

-Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD.)

Six years ago, the House Intelligence Committee suggested that both Chinese companies ZTE and Huawei should be banned from the U.S. At that time the report claimed that both companies were representing a national risk for U.S security, due to the high bond between those companies and the Chinese government. Earlier this year, Mr.Trump used the same national security risk as an excuse to stop Broadcom from acquiring Qualcomm.

Seeing Donald Trump against Broadcom in the past, and now showing concern with ZTE situation is kinda contradictory according to many technology analysts.