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President Trump To Use Huawei CFO As a Bargaining Chip (politico.com)
hackingbear shares a report from Politico, adding: "This fuels the suspicion that the Chinese executive is held as a hostage for the ongoing trade negotiation with China." From the report: President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he reserved the right to weigh in on the Justice Department's case against the CFO of Huawei, if it would help him close a trade deal with Beijing or would serve other American national security interests. "If I think it's good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made -- which is a very important thing -- what's good for national security -- I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary," Trump told Reuters. Trump added that President Xi Jinping of China had not called him about the case, but that the White House had been in touch with both the Justice Department and Chinese officials. Huawei's CFO, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada earlier this month at the request of American authorities, who allege that she violated U.S. sanctions against Iran. Yesterday, a Vancouver judge ruled that Meng would be released on a $7.5 million bail if she remains in British Columbia.
That seems like a pretty unhealthy precedent to set.
This seems like a dangerous/crazy step to take. How does this type of negotiation tactic end? (ie - has someone thought out the likely reactions and steps the Other Side is likely to take?) What's to stop other countries from following suit?
Traditional diplomacy rested on a sort of 'gentleman's agreement'. While some of that diplomacy took forever and yielded less than we wished, at least (on the surface) it was civilized and seemed to prevent harm. Our current course could get unpleasant quickly.
Or am I just overthinking this?
they do not use people as bargaining chips, which is hilarious since Trump as chief Executive is the head of the Justice Dept (yeah, yeah, I know it's "non-partisan", tell me another one and say hi to the Attorney General he fired for not playing ball). The real damage Trump has done was to the rule of law in America.
Thing is, his poll numbers haven't budge an inch (according to 538, which is usually right). He's a true Demagogue. Nothing he does or says makes his base second guess him. The GOP is even trying to get him to go after Social Security and Medicare, with the assumption being that he could do it without taking any damage politically. And you know what? I think they're right. Fortunately he's said no (so far).
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He's been mixing trade, military, law, and personal business ever since he got into office. And you wonder why the turnover is so high.
Table-ized A.I.
Wow, how long before we have US executives traveling abroad being held in foreign prisons for similar ransom?
their poll numbers say otherwise. Can you just imagine the shit storm if Obama pulled this crap? Take everything Trump's done for the last 2 years, put it down on paper, CTL-R / Trump / Obama and run a poll and see what kind of numbers you get.
My point is his base has stopped thinking and they're just feeling. Trump feels _good_. He tells them what they want to hear. He gives them simple answers to complex problems. It's classic demagoguery just like Stalin, Hitler, Mao and Mussolini did. Trump's not violent like them, he just like attention. So he'll fade into the background when his time's up.
Trump's paving the way for a real dictator. We, and most definately Trump's base (who've been crying about FEMA death camps since Obama got elected) should be freaking the heck out about that. Trouble is they mostly get their media from propaganda outfits (Fox News, Alex Jones, and now even NRA TV, go watch it, it's creepy as hell). So they can't see the very thing they fear most creeping up on them...
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Consider this: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/1.... If he is using a high-level figurehead as a bargaining chip to force China to let those folks out, more power to him.
Canada should absolutely determine that the US extradition request was made in bad faith. Except... Now the Chinese have gone and disappeared a couple of Canadian citizens, which means we'll look like chumps if we give in to China. Thanks for involving us in your stupid pissing match, US and China.
To a Chinese colleague telling me a few days ago that this whole thing must of course be instructed/manipulated by US executive power, I answered I did not believe so because unlike China and other authoritarian regimes, the ground of our western democracies is that justice is not a tool of the executive power but independent.
As an example a meaningful symbolic action in the beginning of the French revolution was to free the prisoners from the King's prison La Bastille.
Apparently I was wrong. Is America going to let Trump undermine democracy until there is nothing left of it?
Well if he was actually pissed about this he could simply issue a pardon for the alleged crimes. Case over, "Deep State" thoroughly thwarted, tensions eased and good karma points earned with China. The use of Presidential pardons to counter over-zealous prosecution is emphatically one of the use cases in mind when the pardon power was written.
But, no, he publicly muses about using the arrest of Ms. Meng as a bargaining chip to extract a better deal from the Chinese government. That dramatically increases the chance that extradition will be denied, since political overtones were just dropped all over the case, while burning any good will there may have been from the trade truce.
It really isn't normal to forewarn the President about individual arrests in ordinary cases. If this had simply been left to career staff to make a legitimate case the Chinese government would have scowled some and then filed it as precedent for later use when the shoe is on the other foot. But it was very much the President's choice to make Iran related issues a priority for the Justice Department, as is his rightful prerogative, and also his choice to make this case a political football. So if he is in fact pissed about this, some of that ire needs to land on the man in the mirror.
A fundamental underpinning of extradition proceedings is the âoedouble criminalityâ principle. If Canada is to extradite, there must be an offence charged in the U.S. that corresponds to one in Canadian law. While Canada has followed the UN with sanctions on Iran as regards nuclear and missile technology, I'm not aware that UN sanctions ever covered the trade in telecoms. Since in Canada sanctions like this emanate from the UN, I doubt there is a matching crime here. There is also the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act that spells out that American sanctions cannot operate in Canada -- otherwise 10,000s of Canadians who have visited Cuba could be rounded up.
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