Political Quotes

“Mr. President, earlier this year, the Commerce Department found the Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE guilty of persistently and willfully violating U.S. sanctions laws on North Korea and Iran. That is a pretty serious offense for a large company to commit. It found that the company then repeatedly lied about it and went to great lengths to cover it up. In response, as we should, across party lines, our government took action and put a series of strict export and transaction prohibitions on ZTE in mid-April of this year. We did what we should do. A large international company--it happened to be Chinese in this case--broke the law, broke a serious law on sanctions and then lied about what it did, so we took action. It is pretty galling to learn that early this morning, the Commerce Department announced yet another agreement with the Chinese telecommunications giant to enable it to interact with U.S. companies. They committed that kind of offense, then they lied about that kind of offense, and now we are saying: It is OK. You can come back into our country and do business with us. What gives here? We can't allow a Chinese company or a company anywhere--I mean, I am not picking on China in this case, but China is a country we have had difficulty with. It is habitually breaking international trade laws and seems to have as much trouble with the truth as some people in the White House have. Yet we have allowed this Chinese company to violate U.S.…”