President Trump has made an unpopular “deal” with the Chinese tech company ZTE. Trump tweeted yesterday that, “ZTE, the large Chinese phone company, buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies. This is also reflective of the larger trade deal we are negotiating with China and my personal relationship with President Xi.”
Trump also claimed in another tweet to have handled ZTE's security violations, regarding its sale of US technology to Iran and North Korea: “Senator Schumer and Obama Administration let phone company ZTE flourish with no security checks. I closed it down then let it reopen with high level security guarantees, change of management and board, must purchase U.S. parts and pay a $1.3 Billion fine.”
Trump ordered the Commerce Department to lift a seven-year ban on ZTE's purchase of US parts, a ban that's only been in effect for just shy of a month. Members of Congress on the both sides of the aisle are critical of Trump's deal, including Democrat Senator Mark Warner and Republican Senator Mark Rubio.
Why has Trump been so willing to deal with ZTE? There's no clear answer, but you can bet the company's lobbyists have had a role. According to the LinkedIn account of ZTE's in-house lobbyist Peter Ruffo, while working in the Senate, he “[m]anaged US-China relations, US-China clean energy cooperation, energy, environment, and other legislative issues... Led successful initiative on international innovation and market access.”
Prior to joining ZTE, its other in-house lobbyist, Angela Simpson, worked as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the United States Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration. Her LinkedIn resume gives an account of her work there: “Deputy head of agency principally responsible by law for advising the President on telecommunications and information policy issues.”