But yeah, if this is the game that the nations are going to play, then you don't want to be the poor schmuck sitting in a Chinese prison for 10 years just so they can make a point. It's probably time to start considering business models that allow you to operate at a distance from China. (Same with the smaller Chinese operators I guess? I mean, if I'm being fair. They should probably start considering models that don't require them to be in North America.)
If you're small, it's just a fact that this game is in danger of evolving beyond the capacity of your resources to play it.
Bottom line, whether you're Chinese or American, no one wants to start spending years on years in foreign prisons because they wanted to go to a foreign country to work for a few years. It's just not worth the risk.
Facilitating deals with Iran to deliver US products in defiance of US sanctions seems like something the average schmuck hopefully isn't getting mixed up in. It's not quite the same as accidentally violating some random domestic business laws.
I am sure most of us break UAE laws on being with members of opposite gender without a chaperone and even post pictures of class reunions, etc. But I'm not expecting to be arrested for this while visiting, say, Sweden.
Huawei stole a Canadian company's technology [1], markets products in America [2], has issued dollar-denominated debt [3] and then went and violated sanctions in dollar-denominated transactions. This is a far cry from extraterritorial enforcement for either the U.S. or Canada.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...
[2] https://www.huawei.com/us/
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/04/26/huawei-...
Also, after Russia-Ukraine conflict many Ukranian politicians are under a criminal investigation in Russia (and I guess Russian politicians are investigated in Ukraine). Should they be extradited too?
And if they were in a country that cooperated with Russia to extradite criminals, this exact thing might happen to them.
Yes, if you violate another country’s laws, you are subject to arrest. Whether or not they can actually arrest you depends if you are in their jurisdiction or a jurisdiction that does extradition.
The US is still the sole global superpower, it is still (yes, despite Trump) largely charged with maintaining the world order that has existed since WW2. Russia is not a superpower, its reach is regional and it has few allies. You'll see a lot of varied answers in this thread, the only one that matters is this: the US can do things that Iceland (tiny nation) or Russia (large, regional power) cannot because it's far more powerful in most every regard. That's not meant to justify any arbitrary flexing of that power that the US does, it's an explanation for why the US can do it and Russia generally can't in the case of Georgia. It's an imposition of will, backed up by immense diplomatic, financial and military power. Few countries will comply with a Russian request to arrest an American executive, dozens of major countries will at least consider a US request like the one in this case.
I mean, I know it's 1999 but who knows what will happen in the years to come? /:s
What I said non-the-less is true. It's unpopular to state it, to say why things are the way they are in actuality. Sometimes reality is unpopular.
It still has lots of nuclear weapons. And probably more tactical nuclear weapons than the US does. But yes, it has fewer allies, for sure.
No, the US is not "charged" with maintaining the "world order". The US just thinks that it is. And they're so bad at their self-imposed job that the only reason why they can get away with it is that they're a superpower.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-03-13/now-ar...
As for [2], [3]: I don't think there's any special law about people who use US dollars being under US jurisdiction.
If it's true, I'd avoid USD like plague
https://www.rt.com/business/443354-iran-south-korea-currenci...
Because the USD is the international reserve currency for a lot of countries and the US largely is pretty stable, most countries are fine with cooperating in cases like this with notable exceptions.
FWIW that's changing under Trump (i.e. people are seeing the US as less stable), and the EU is making efforts to increase the use of the Euro as an international reserve currency.
Then Canada gets to do the arresting and jailing.
Re next 2 points: If you want to justify violance you need stronger triggers. Those 2 just give the US right to ban the Huawei from country or using the USD.
This looks like US doing it because it can. But then US is not facing USSR whose going to die from self-inflicted wounds. China have the most capitalist companies (Apple/etc) defending it.
That’s...what happened.
> if you want to justify violance you need stronger triggers
Violating sanctions is a criminal offense under U.S. and Canadian law. Huawei chose to do business in America and Canada. Its executive chose to travel to Canada.
This is a difficult story to mangle into a morality play.
In retrospect, that was foolish.
> Violating sanctions is a criminal offense under U.S. and Canadian law.
Just because its legal does not mean there wont be an aggressive reaction[1]. China will probably respond with force. Huawei with market exit. Then there are other actors who would respond in there own way we would never know about. US probably going to take net-hurt from this.
Do you want to hurt US market/USD ? Because thats what use of your justifications will do.
[1] edit: By that I mean non-US actors have not agreed to react aggressively. Legal implies that only US persons have.
That's not going to happen. China is also not going to over-react. They're going to under-react, because their economy and global political context is at a slightly precarious point. It's why the US has been able to apply such immense tariffs without China doing anything crazy so far: they still need the US more than the US needs China (which isn't the same thing as the US not needing China at all). It's also partially why China is relatively eager to find positive ground with the US on trade issues. For example the US is currently building a coalition to reform the WTO in a manner that is detrimental to China (it caused the recent surge in Chinese interest in settling the trade dispute). The US is running perpetual trade deficits with almost everyone (specifically of importance, the major economies), which leaves most everyone having more of an interest in going along with the US rather than China on trade modifications. To say nothing of the IP issues and market barriers in place in China.
China will find a modest way to stab the US over this, unless it's resolved relatively quickly. It won't be a big deal for China, arresting one executive is not something they'll care to shake the world over at all. This isn't Jack Ma we're talking about, which would demand a big response due to his prominence and popularity. This is a nation run tightly by a Communist party that at the highest levels (ie Xi) barely likes business executives to begin with, they merely tolerate them as useful tools to get from here to there in a process that China perceives itself as going through. Executives of that sort are pawns that can be thrown away or swapped out with little concern. Overall it may be nothing more than the US acquiring a small bargaining chip at a tiny cost, which it can then release to perceived good will when it does so. It's a relatively simple political move if that's the case.
Today US became less reliable.
The market in this context effectively means the top 30 or 40 economies. They make up the extreme majority of all global GDP.
What practical alternative to the US as an essential ally in the coming global bifurcation with China and Russia do you perceive that: EU, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, UK, etc - have? Who else is there? There is nobody else to help offset the enormity of China's looming power. The US has, on many occasions since WW2, done radically worse than arrest a Huawei executive over sanctions on a foreign nation. Mr. Market barely blinked over Snowden and the global espionage revelations for example, which was a thousand times worse than this incident. It had enormous commerce implications. For the most part the world went on with its business; and here we are years later, the US espionage system continues unabated (actually it's stronger now) and mostly unchallenged. This arrest will barely matter at all to Mr. Market.
There are whole categories of companies/products (OVH/ProtonMail/etc) due to NSA. So yes USA got slapped for it too just not as visible as Rise-of-China.
I would think that human rights, morals, and ideals of liberty and freedom are more important than a few percentages of GDP growth.
I'm not naive enough to think that China will suddenly reform itself, end oppression against it's people and take complete advantage of its people's incredible energy, creativity and intelligence.
Second, Canada (and most democracies) does not extradite to countries where the Canadian courts are not satisfied you will get a fair trial, or where the person would face capital punishment. So all these comparisons of being extradited to Russia or China or any other dictatorship are not exactly valid. That kind of thing is not on the table.
In fact right now Canada has a major dispute with China because the Canadian government won't return even run of the mill Chinese criminals because they will likely be executed after a sham trial in China.
(which is exactly why this is different than them simply doing business with Iran in the first place)
It isn’t an assumption, it’s in the actual export laws.
In general, they don't have to. Only to the extent they want to continue doing business with the US do they have to comply.
This is obviously true in the case of cash transactions which consist of the physical transfer of small green pieces of paper in places outside the US.
It is also true of bank transactions, for example the vast Eurodollar market which has been in existence since the 1950s. If a non-US bank offers USD-denominated accounts and transfers funds from one of those accounts to another, this can and does happen entirely outside US jurisdiction.
> The basic system of international trade is:
> 1. International trade is done using U.S. dollars.
> 2. Any trade done using U.S. dollars is subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government: Dollars flow through banks in the U.S., and if the U.S. government doesn’t want dollars to be used for some purpose—to fund genocide or terrorists or dictators or narcotraffickers—then it can reasonably effectively cut off dollar funding for those purposes, and punish banks, including foreign banks, that disobey it.
> 3. The U.S. is a good and responsible steward, and only cuts off dollar funding for bad purposes like genocide or terrorism or totalitarianism or drugs.
[...]
> If other countries lose confidence that the U.S.’s decisions about who can use dollars are predictable, stable, constrained by the rule of law and responsive to the concerns of other large economies, then those other countries might look elsewhere.
Or the beginning of [3]:
> There was also a sense of uneasiness with the U.S. using the power of the dollar to enforce its foreign policy: Because all dollar payments are nominally processed through the U.S., moving dollars anywhere in the world effectively puts you under U.S. jurisdiction, even if the dollars are financing purely non-U.S. transactions. Lots of Europeans — bankers but also politicians and businesspeople and regular citizens — didn’t have the same antipathy to, say, Cuba that the U.S. does; they found it unfair that European banks were prohibited from doing business in Cuba not by European regulations but by American ones.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthe...
[2] Section "Dollar hegemony" of https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-04/trying...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-20/u-s-sa...
Even in the US, there are over 20,000 laws and regulations at the federal level alone. In China, there are even more. Any small foreign operator in China naive enough to assert with 100% confidence that they are not in violation of any of those codes is being dangerously foolish.
So here's the thing, I actually agree with you. What China will do, they will do out of retaliation. However, I can pretty much guarantee that whoever the patsy is, that person will be in violation of some obscure code that no one in their right mind would have been paying attention to. They will definitely be in violation of some law. And they will condemn him/her to whatever ungodly prison camp for however many years.
So China will also be simply arresting someone for violating their laws. That's the issue.
Now my point is that if you are American, and a small operator without the clout to prevent this sort of thing from happening to you, it's best to try to get out in front of the problem. I know that I really don't want to be one of the poor stooges sitting in a Chinese prison for a decade because these people are trying to make tit-for-tat points.
I'm not talking politics or philosophy. I'm just saying that China is not like the US, and I'm advising people to be careful if they are small and plan to operate in what appears to be a dangerous legal environment that will likely be getting more treacherous with time.
Huawei is a huge player in an inherently global business, complicated by the fact that selling telecoms network equipment necessitates dealing with quasi-state actors in most countries. Anyone playing at the C-level in such a company is definitely well advised around things like FCPA (and its non-US equivalents) and sanctions regimes.
Small operators get the short end of the stick, sure, but Huawei's CFO is not a small operator (and the sad recipient of China's likely retaliation probably won't be, either).
"21 USC §§331, 333, 343 & 21 CFR §133.113(a)(3) make it a federal crime for a cheesemaker to sell cheddar cheese unless the curd was matted into a cohesive mass."
Specialists exist both on the government side as say food safty inspectors etc, and the private side as compliance officers. So, rules like this are not obscure for people building factory’s to manufacture cheddar and your local cops are not going to know about this crap they are searching your house for something else.
This actually works really well, as we want food to be safe to eat even if most people are not aware of how long food can be kept at what temperatures. Likewise what safty systems need to be part of nuclear reactors, or the minimum safty factor for bridges.
I don't think your average reasonable person is in opposition to requirements to label food correctly and not mislead consumers. These things are already written in law, in the case of food it's governed by the FDA. However, when we start including overly specific laws like this, of which this is but one of many (sheesh, check-out what was in the TPP), then every other company in every other industry wants the same treatment, and we end up with a convoluted mess that we have today. This is a problem because your average citizen can't possibly keep up with all this; but more importantly these overly specific laws are a nightmare when it comes time to introduce new legislation. So much time is wasted on garbage like this.
The TPP actually had plenty of reasonable components to it, but it was also filled to the brim with corporate garbage. It's hard enough to form trade agreements and pass legislation without corporations insisting their obscure needs must be met. Particularly when legislation and agreements are either signed and passed as entire unit, or not at all. It just wastes everyone's time when there's a few odd sticking points holding up the whole process.
Written laws give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the relevant field.
> Written laws give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the relevant field.
"Written laws ... independent of legislation" doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say here?
You're right, it doesn't. That's what happens when you truncate a quote to completely remove the context.
I said that it's odd that these things are written in law seems as we already have laws that cover this more broadly. Attempting to maintain in written law explicit definitions of every food that humans can fathom, and how they are presently produced, is clearly untenable.
> Seems pretty clearly tenable to me. It is, in fact, being tened. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
in response to:
> Attempting to maintain in written law explicit definitions of every food that humans can fathom, and how they are presently produced, is clearly untenable.
Exactly.
Selective enforcement is indistinguishable from arbitrary arrest.
China's harassers get to use the much more powerful "lock up whoever I want for no reason at all, forever"
There are enough laws on the books to lock people up at essentially any time if the police care enough to do so.
This is one of the most interesting cases I've seen:
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-...
“Most of all, America passes the critical gate test. Open the gate and see where people go — in or out. This is still the country people flock to.”
— George Will, 1992
“We are the ally of the US not because they are powerful, but because we share their values. I am not surprised by anti-Americanism; but it is a foolish indulgence. For all their faults and all nations have them, the US are a force for good; they have liberal and democratic traditions of which any nation can be proud. I sometimes think it is a good rule of thumb to ask of a country: are people trying to get into it or out of it? It’s not a bad guide to what sort of country it is.”
— Tony Blair, 2003
When there are people camped outside of the Chinese, Polish, French or Serbian embassies waiting to apply for immigrant visas, then maybe I might agree that the US isn’t a beacon. However, reality is that more people want to emmigrate to the US compared to every single other country in the world. That seems like the very definition of beacon to me. Perhaps the British aren’t clamoring to move to the US, but citizens of many other countries are. The US does have faults, but if you dig deep enough into any country, there are faults. The US is just a popular target for hatred because nobody in the media really gets worked up over the policies of Denmark or Uruguay. Nobody could probably even name a single person extradited by Canada to a non-US country, but it happens every day, but since it’s the CFO of a major corporation, it’s big news and somehow the narrative is being proffered that the US is acting in some exceptional way here.
Unsurprisingly, many pagans chose to convert to Christianity, rather than be murdered on the spot.
So maybe we can stop using this word "beacon", and use something more appropriate. How about "fortress"?
I, too remember the cold war. I don't see this happening today.
When did Assad get overthrown, and why? And how? Very confusing comment.
Currently Germany, the largest EU economy, is dependent on Russian natural gas. Once you cut that dependency, Russia will get weaker and more isolated, which is in national interest of US I assume. US is also trying to make Germany less dependent on Russia so they can put on more pressure on Russian economy without damaging Germany's economy.
Google is your friend, there were plans for the Iran–Iraq–Syria natural gas pipeline and Putin intervened to stop the project as it was against Russian national interest. Also don't forget about Russian military base in Syria, getting rid of that in the process would be an added bonus from US point of view.
I did not specify business interests exclusively btw. It could be business interests or national interests (or combination of both, often when a country pursues regime change as a part of national interest, there are private companies that make profit).
Governments do not get toppled only for economical benefit, often it's mainly because of geopolitics, see cold war, both US and Russia were toppling over governments and installing puppet regimes in various countries as part of their fight for dominance. Economic/business interests are secondary most of the time.
Reasons for overthrowing Gaddafi were iffy at best also (I'd would actually like to turn the table and let you explain it to me, because I haven't heard any valid reason why we randomly started bombing Syria).
I'm not familiar with any important economic interests there, although they produce some oil and export it mainly to Europe (but it's small potatoes). So I'd assume it was geopolitics again, maybe Gaddafi was friend of Putin also.
Syria now is a complete mess with different local strongmen and terrorist groups competing for power, there's basically a constant state of anarchy and violence so I don't see how you can argue it was a good idea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27état
I've see US soldiers in the Middle East while I was there, generically they're just people but in a way theres something strange about a US military base in another country. I was born an expat during the Gulf War period and US is really seen as a big advanced petrodollar bully in the region and has really only brought even more death and chaos to Iraq than Saddam did ironically. Kofi Annan, past UN Secretary General, himself has said that the Iraq war was unjust but then again I'm just reminiscing about something the US and US citizens no longer cares about. Iraq is now just another failed state, and the deaths there don't matter.
It is absolutely crazy to think that US law should apply worldwide.
The article does not even mention if Wanzhou Meng is US citizen who broke US law in the US.
This case might be retaliation and fear mongering similar to the case of Julian Assange which is pure retaliation and fear mongering.
Don't steal a Canadian company's technology [1], market products in America [2], issue dollar-denominated debt [3] and then violate sanctions in dollar-denominated transactions, and the U.S. and Canada will probably leave you alone.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-ag...
[2] https://www.huawei.com/us/
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeanbaptiste/2018/04/26/huawei-...
The other reality is that certain countries have cooperation agreements where they feel their laws are compatible enough that they agree to extradite individuals that break those laws. Seems pretty standard business to me.
If you know you're violating a high profile US law, dont travel to countries that are buddies with the US. Maybe she didn't know about the arrest request?
They’re calling them US sanctions but the UN has also imposed sanctions on Iran. That may explain why Canada arested him. One signatory picking up a person on behalf of a more motivated one.
Canada wants trade with the US more than trade with Iran and thus bows to the US.
As do EU nations.
Examples:
https://www.rt.com/business/443315-swift-iran-us-sanctions/
Quote:
The Belgium-based financial messaging service added: “This step, while regrettable, has been taken in the interest of the stability and integrity of the wider global financial system.”
SWIFT’s decision further undermines EU efforts to maintain trade with Iran and save an international deal with Tehran to curtail its nuclear program, after President Donald Trump pulled the US out in May. Being cut off from SWIFT makes it difficult for Iran to get paid for exports and to pay for imports.
https://www.rt.com/business/444051-eu-fears-us-sanctions-ira...
Quote:
Earlier this week, European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova pledged to find an effective solution, saying that technical work on creating the mechanism to allow EU trade with Iran continued.
“We Europeans cannot accept that a foreign power, not even our closest friend and ally, takes decisions over our legitimate trade with another country,” she told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, stressing that the bloc would not be cowed by probable US penalties.
Also, under Russian laws companies like Google or Facebook must keep Russian users' data in Russia; they are not complying.
Sure, but, most crime denominated in dollars goes through New York too. The section called "Stationary bandits" in the following expands this theory a bit:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-27/don-t-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/1...
No other country could make a law like that and have any success in enforcing it abroad.
Why should Huawei get extra warning shots? They knew they would have to comply with US law and sanctions if they wanted to do business in the US. They chose to try and ignore those sanctions. Ignorantia juris non excusat.
You are suggesting that we make let international companies import products under a pretense, and then we are supposed to politely remind them of their obligations every time they run off the rails?
Huawei is one step away from being a branch of the Chinese intelligence service. We did the right thing.
The reports from US commitee's investigating Huawei have never demonstrated any real evidence of the alleged spying or Huawei being a "branch of the Chinese intelligence". Seems like overblown paranoia and fear as China begins to dominate the worlds economy. Not to mention the US routinely spies on other countries as much as possible, inspects all foreign telecom traffic (including phone calls like Huawei allegedly does) going through the US as the NSA leaks demonstrated, but they seem to dislike it when the tables are turned.
The only reason they get away with double-standards like that all over the place is because they have the biggest guns/economy. I call that bullying not justice. Its clearly a power-struggle not justice, you can't claim some moral high ground over not spying on others when you do the same thing.
I feel they are free to protect their national interests - say by banning Huawei if they suspect spying but if they have no proof, they have no authority to start extraditing and threatening and possibly prosecuting people.
The United States is currently operating an illegal drone war in other parts of the world.
Imagine how you would feel if Russia was flying drones above the US and targeted bombing a certain extremist group of people. Are you sure the next wedding you attend none of your friends friends is a target (or a mistaken target)?
Imagine how you life would be when death can come from the sky at any moment and there is nothing you can do about it.
lol
Several Australian Mining and Casino executives and employees have been imprisoned for considerable time by China's opaque justice system.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-04/stern-hu-explainer-wh...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/crown-says-detained-staff-in...
No Australian embassy officials were permitted to assist or even observe court proceedings.
Needless to say, this is not the way a country with a fair justice system behaves.
Joseph Nacchio, the CEO of Qwest, was jailed for insider trading in 2001 and wasn't allowed to use his defence in court that it was retaliation for refusing NSA data requests.
Why are you so sure that this CFO did not break US trade law with regards to Iran?
Let's bring it to a trial, that would be the fair thing, and that's what is taking place.
The indicting US Attorney will be have to show that some element of an alleged crime took place within the United States.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/sixth_amendment
For those who follow China closely, this delusion doesn't really exist. Check out this article from 2010:
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2010/05/how_not_to_get_kidnappe...
https://www.chinalawblog.com/2012/06/how-not-to-get-kidnappe...
A simple search on that (excellent) blog will give you many, many more examples. Those articles are years old; it's only getting worse.
But seriously, China is already preventing foreigners from leaving the country. https://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/china-steps-up-and-widen...
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/25/world/asia/china-us-busin...
Though there's a lot of realpolitik, it actually does matter what the laws say as well.
One that China is locking up thousands of Uyghur people for indefinite periods [1]
This one.
Well, I guess its closer to home when American businessman may face the same fate of being locked up in a Chinese prison.
It is annoying to read news like this. US is not a world's police. They should not be telling foreign citizens with whom they should or shouldn't trade.
But I really wonder how many shocks this system can take. I would bet money that an important US executive for some company is arrested in the two years while visiting China.
EDIT:
There's another comment here asking how it's possibly legal for the US to do this. Whether you believe it or not, it's useful to know that the philosophy much of our state department believes in is called Realpolitik (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik). It doesn't really matter what the law says or what treaties we've signed, the primary thing that matters for the US is what's pragmatic for it at the moment.