President Trump needs to start paying more attention to his intelligence briefings. Consider the absurd tweet that Trump posted on Sunday.
President Xi of China, and I, are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 13, 2018
One big problem. ZTE is a partial front company and cover operation for the Chinese intelligence community and a critical node by which Beijing seeks to steal American secrets. Providing cellphones and telecommunications networks that offer a range of back doors for Chinese intelligence surveillance, ZTE is to China what WikiLeaks is to Russia: a very useful tool.
Trump would know this if he had spent time asking questions of his intelligence briefers. But were Trump to help ZTE operate in the U.S. market, it would be the equivalent of a bank CEO giving a highly capable group of robbers the key codes to the bank’s vaults, its online accounts, and the proprietary details of its customers.
Still, the strike against ZTE’s name isn’t simply that it operates as an intelligence front. It’s that the company has repeatedly breached sanctions embargoes on Iran and North Korea, supplying those regimes with new means to control their populations and expand their own power.
And now Trump wants to give ZTE access to the U.S. market?
So long “America first,” hello “America first via the Communist Party standing committee!”
Of course, Trump evidently believes that Xi Jinping is supporting U.S. interests on other issues and thus that he owes the Chinese leader. Trump’s primary focus here is his belief that Xi has been instrumental in getting Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table. And while that’s true, assuming the table is the deal is a highly misguided assessment.
Anything Xi has offered Trump in return for his ZTE help — such as a reduction in Chinese intellectual property theft, for example — is unlikely to come to fruition. Xi is too ambitious to give up anything when he can play the U.S. president for free. Put simply, when it comes to the U.S., Xi is a master of talking the talk and then walking a very different walk.
Regardless, Trump has a responsibility to ignore ZTE’s plight. Helping the company to survive via access to the U.S. market would be an act of near insanity.
