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-...

I can believe that. But how is this related?

> markets products in America

> has issued dollar-denominated debt

> and then went and violated sanctions in dollar-denominated transactions.

I don't believe any of this is true for Huawei incorporated in China. US subsidiaries of Huawei most likely follow the US law or otherwise their execs would get arrested.

American criminal law, like most criminal law, pierces corporate veils. Sanctions law, in particular, is an absolute responsibility law that traces liability to decision makers.

The analogy would be an American company violating Chinese laws while selling products in China and borrowing in renminbi and then getting pissed off when their executive is arrested by a neighbouring country. "The other entity broke the law" would be as silly a defense in that case as it is here.

And if we don't want to use American sanctions laws as a baseline, the alleged violations all happened while U.N. sanctions were in effect.

UN sanctions cover mostly military and nuclear equipment - I don't believe that either ZTE or Huawei participated in arms sales to Iran. US accuses both of integrating and reselling modem chipsets made by companies like Broadcom.

This looks to me like trade war where law is used instrumentally and public opinion is shaped to make it look differently to what it actually is.