(Ng Han Guan/AP)Senior U.S. officials struggled Monday to explain and act on President Trump’s abrupt decision to rescue Chinese telecom giant ZTE — a move that caught many of them by surprise. Liu and other Chinese officials have demanded that the Commerce Department ease restrictions on ZTE, but until Trump’s Sunday tweet, the administration had resisted. In exchange for easing restrictions on ZTE, U.S. officials are pressing China to relax tariffs on agricultural products and allow a U.S. technology company, Qualcomm, to acquire NXP Semiconductors. Chinese officials had effectively blocked that deal by imposing regulatory hurdles, U.S. officials familiar with the matter said. “ZTE, the large Chinese phone company, buys a big percentage of individual parts from U.S. companies,” he wrote on Twitter.

Source: Washington Post May 15, 2018 00:22 UTC