Donald Trump reportedly vented “apoplectic” fury at Boris Johnson in a phone call last week after the British prime minister’s decision to use technology from the Chinese tech giant Huawei in the UK’s 5G network.
The U.S. government has accused Huawei of stealing sensitive American technology and has banned U.S. companies from selling technology to Huawei without express approval from the Trump administration.
On December 1, 2018, Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and daughter of the company’s founder, was arrested in Canada at the U.S.’s request. The U.S. has charged her with breaching laws against trading with Iran and also financial fraud.
Meng is undergoing an extradition hearing in Canada that began last month.
Johnson’s administration expressed disappointment that the U.S. could offer no suitable alternative to Huawei’s equipment but agreed to work with Washington to reduce the use of Huawei’s equipment.
U.S. attorney general William Barr has suggested the U.S. take an ownership stake in Nokia and Ericsson, two Scandinavian makers of cell phone technology, to help strengthen Huawei’s competitors.
The conflict may scuttle Britain’s hopes of quickly signing a post-Brexit trade agreement with the U.S.
TRENDPOST: That Washington can and does dictate what other nations should do, slap sanctions on those it wants to punish, and invade nations whose governments they want to overthrow, has become the American way.
And, despite these overt foreign entanglements, its Congress supports them and the general public, and both the informed and uniformed accepts them.
