Donald Trump says he would intervene in arrest of Huawei CFO Sabrina Meng Wanzhou if it helped secure trade deal with China
- Trump said he would intervene ‘if I think it’s good for the country’
- A Canadian court has granted bail to Sabrina Meng Wanzhou while she awaits an extradition hearing
US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would intervene with the US Justice Department in the case against a Chinese telecommunications executive if it would help secure a trade deal with Beijing.
“If I think it’s good for the country, if I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security – I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary,” Trump said in a wide-ranging interview with Reuters in the Oval Office.
At the request of US authorities, Huawei Technologies executive Sabrina Meng Wanzhou was arrested earlier this month in Vancouver on charges of violating US sanctions against Iran.
The arrest came the same day Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping declared a 90-day truce in their trade war during summit talks in Buenos Aires.
Trump, who wants China to open up its markets to more American-made products and stop what Washington calls the theft of intellectual property, said he had not yet spoken to Xi about the case against Huawei’s executive.