Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

It seems to me Trump and his administration has made a mess of the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Canada.  Huawei is a target for the U.S. because it is believed that it was spying for the communist government of China.  It is also in violation of intellectual property theft according to the U.S.  This is not shocking as many companies in China are probably guilty of these accusations.  But spying is a two way street as Edward Snowden had revealed that the U.S. had spy on China in general and on Huawei in particular.  So why arrest Meng now?

It also curious that Meng was only charged with violation of the U.S. sanction on Iran, not spying.  How is that a crime for a foreign national?  Why would a non U.S. company be subject to a sanction that was unilaterally imposed on Iran.  The U.S. was the only country that withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal.  So Huawei was not violating international or Chinese law if it dealt with Iran.  Since Trump withdrew from the Iran treaty, it has made it clear that any company, foreign or domestic, that dealt with Iran will suffer economic consequences.  This economic pressure is legitimate use of American power.  But to arrest someone for violating a sanction that none of the other countries involved agreed to, seems to me is bullying on Trump's part.

The worst is that Trump has now said that Meng could be a chip in the trade war with China.  This legitimizes China's claim that this was all political and that Meng has not committed any real crime.  This also puts Canada in an awkward position as doing the U.S. work against China for U.S. political gain only.  In the short term, China will punish Canada even if it doesn't want to go deeper into a trade war with the U.S.  There maybe Americans and Canadians detained in China in retaliation.  In the long term, China will expedite its tech advances to decrease dependence to the U.S. in such as areas as semi-conductor.  U.S. allies in the future may not want to do the dirty work for the U.S. if they believe that they would be thrown under the bus by Trump as was Canada this time.