John Bolton: ‘We’re Entitled’ To Tell Huawei, ‘You’re Not Selling In The United States’

• John Bolton said Tuesday the U.S. government is “entitled” to ban sales from Chinese tech giant Huawei.
• Sens. Tom Cotton and Chris Van Hollen introduced a bill Tuesday to reinforce Trump’s efforts to blacklist Huawei.
• Trump said he would allow Huawei to purchase products from American manufacturers to ease the blacklist after he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 Summit in May.

National security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday that the U.S. government is “entitled” tell Chinese tech giant Huawei that it can’t sell products in the U.S.

His comments come on the same day Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen introduced a bipartisan bill calling to “reinforce the Trump administration’s efforts to prevent the Chinese-owned telecom company Huawei from threatening America’s national security,” according to Cotton’s website.

Bolton was speaking at the Edmund Burke Foundation’s National Conservatism Conference Tuesday when he said U.S. companies are “competitors with China,” which “has a different view of how society functions.” Therefore, U.S. companies “are entitled to protect [them]selves against the imposition of that point of view of on our own society,” he said.

“So in the case of any of the high-tech companies, when they engage in activity that benefits China and potentially harms America, I think we’re entitled to look at … companies like Huawei and say, ‘You’re not selling in the United States,’” he continued, receiving applause from the audience.

Bolton concluded by saying Huawei is “a state-owned enterprise doing what [its] masters in Beijing want you to do. Whether is Apple, Google, or any of the high-tech companies … they’re so desperate for market share that they’ll do things to compromise our safety here.”

The legislation introduced by Cotton and Van Hollen would “codify President [Donald] Trump’s recent Executive Order and would prohibit the removal of Huawei from the Commerce Department Entity List without an act of Congress.”

As Cotton explained in a statement on his site, “Huawei isn’t a normal business partner for American companies. It’s a front for the Chinese Communist Party. Our bill reinforces the president’s decision to place Huawei on a technology blacklist. American companies shouldn’t be in the business of selling our enemies the tools they’ll use to spy on Americans.”

Rubio echoed Cotton’s statement, saying, “This bill codifies Huawei’s addition to the Commerce Department’s banned Entity List, and thus protects one of the Trump Administration’s most important moves in America’s long-term strategic competition with the totalitarian Chinese government and Communist Party.”

Following Trump’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29, Trump expressed the possibility of American manufacturers continuing to sell products to Huawei in an effort to make a trade deal with Xi.

“We send and we sell to Huawei a tremendous amount of product that goes into the various things that they make, and I said that that’s okay,” he said after his meeting with the Chinese president.

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Trump signed an executive order in May to ban U.S. Huawei sales in American due to national security concerns after the Department of Justice charged the company for bank fraud, wire fraud and violating Iran sanctions. Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei said the blacklisting move would cost the company $30 billion in revenue.

Huawei announced plans to cut about 850 U.S. jobs to lower costs, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources familiar with the matter.

Current U.S. tariffs remain at duties of 25% on $200 billion of Chinese goods.