US and China must step off ‘path to disaster’, warns Jeffrey Sachs after storm of criticism over Huawei defence
- Economist defends comments on tech giant saying the US is targeting it as part of a ‘reckless’ attempt to contain its rival
- Sachs faced firestorm of criticism on Twitter and says he quit social media network because it was ‘too time-consuming and distracting’
Renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs has said diplomacy is needed between the US and China to prevent “utter disaster” as he defended his controversial criticism of Washington’s targeting of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies.
The Columbia University professor faced a firestorm of criticism on social media after he accused the US of hypocrisy for its targeting of Huawei senior executive Sabrina Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested by the Canadian authorities last month at the behest of the US.
Sachs told the South China Morning Post he had been taking a break from the social media site since deleting his Twitter account late last month. “I found Twitter to be time-consuming and distracting,” he said.
Meng was arrested on suspicion of violating US sanctions against Iran, a move Sachs called “reckless” in a syndicated article he published on December 11 with the headline “The War on Huawei”.
He wrote that, by contrast, no major executives from American financial institutions had been arrested even though their companies had been fined for violating their country’s own sanctions on Iran or other nations.