Biden nominates Huawei prosecutor Thea Kendler for key China export post

Name: How the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou soured China's relations with the US and Canada
Uploaded: 2021-07-28T22:39:57.000Z
Duration: 4 min 43 s
Description: How the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou soured China's relations with the US and Canada

The lawyer on the US criminal case against Meng Wanzhou is the president’s pick for assistant secretary for export administration at the Commerce Department

Meng’s arrest in Vancouver has strained ties between the United States, Canada and China

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The US Commerce Department has restricted sales to Huawei Technologies Co. since 2019. Photo: AP

Reuters

Published: 6:39am, 29 Jul 2021Updated: 7:46pm, 29 Jul 2021

US prosecutor Thea Kendler, a lawyer on the criminal case against China’s Huawei Technologies Co. and its Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, will be nominated for a Commerce Department post vital to controlling exports to China, the White House said on Wednesday.

Kendler, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s national security division, will be nominated as assistant secretary for export administration at the Commerce Department. The nomination requires confirmation by the Senate.

Kendler is expected to work under Alan Estevez, a former Pentagon official, who was nominated on July 13 to be the Commerce Department’s undersecretary for industry and security, a position central to the US-China tech battle.

The department has restricted sales to Huawei since 2019, when the company and dozens of its non-US affiliates were added to the US trade blacklist, hobbling the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker.

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How the arrest of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou soured China's relations with the US and Canada

Companies are placed on the so-called “entity list” if their actions are viewed as contrary to US security or foreign policy interests.