China is pretty pissed off over the arrest of Huwaei’s Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou. They are warning of “grave consequences” if she is not released.
Canada has arrested Huawei’s global chief financial officer in Vancouver, where she is facing extradition to the United States, Canada’s Department of Justice said on Wednesday.
The daughter of Chinese tech giant Huawei’s founder has been arrested in Canada and is facing extradition to the United States, dealing a blow to hopes of any easing of Sino-U.S. trade tensions and rocking global stock markets.
The shock arrest of Meng Wanzhou, who is also Huawei Technologies’ chief financial officer, is riling authorities in Beijing and raises fresh doubts over a 90-day truce on trade struck between Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping on the day she was detained.
The arrest is related to violations of U.S. sanctions, a person familiar with the matter said. Reuters was unable to determine the precise nature of the violations.
The fact that she was arrested the same day that Donald Trump and Xi Jinping had agreed to a path forward on trade is quite interesting to say the least. This was clearly timed by actors in the shadow government to sabotage Trump’s efforts to work out a deal.
And the arrest itself is highly dubious. She’s being charged with violating American sanctions on Iran. But China is a sovereign country and arresting one of their citizens for not abiding by American sanctions on a foreign country is beyond the pale. By making this arrest, they are basically claiming that everybody in the world must abide by sanctions placed on foreign countries by the United States government. They even arrested her in Canada on her way to Mexico which raises further questions.
The whole situation is bullshit. Trump should publicly demand her release if not outright pardon her as a show of good faith to the Chinese. If this situation is not resolved, I would fully expect the Chinese government to start arresting American and Canadian executives in China.
The one thing this episode proves yet again is that Trump does not have full control over the federal government. The Department of Justice is a totally rogue agency.
