Can somebody explain to me on what authority the US can request the arrest of a Chinese national on Canadian soil for any action they took while conducting operations of a Chinese organization headquartered in China?
Which to me doesn't sound that different from the above comment talking about Thailand wanting to extradite westerns for offending their king, breaking their law. The something doesn't matter, it's not why she is in trouble.
As a point of clarification, the Guardian article referenced above reports a request from Thailand to extradite Thai nationals living overseas. Thailand's lèse-majesté law was broken by Thais, as opposed to this case where a foreign national broke a US law and was present in an extradition-friendly country (to note, the sanctions are also law in Canada).
So what you are saying is not even Thailand is that much up their asses to behave like the US does in international relationships, this idea of having jurisdiction over anyone all the time is unique to the US.
I assume it's basically the same authority that China would use if they wanted to arrest somebody who happened to be in Laos -- "what's Laos/Canada going to do, say no?"
Obviously Trudeau decided that Trump is such a great ally that he would facilitate US attempts to disrupt Chinese trade despite having spent several billion on a pipeline to export oil to China. Hmmmm.
That is the risk you take! It's not without precedent. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd. Russian citizen working for a Russian company, comes to the US to give a talk and is arrested for violating the DMCA.
It does sound ridiculous but if you do break Chinese laws and travel to a country that has an extraditions treaty with china, then yes, you can get arrested and sent to China for prosecution. That's why it is important to only do business in countries you understand the law in or have business policies which are favorable to your business.
When you do business in another country, you are subject to its laws. You can choose to not worry about other countries laws very easily: do not do any business there.
I have no idea about details of Huawei situation, but if your product ends up in given country do you do business there? How about providing a website and not filtering users by country?
In most countries laws are created faster than citizens can learn them even if they would put a lot of effort into that. In many cases those who vote them haven't even read them in detail. There is no single person on the planet who knows all laws in all countries. Should we abandon the idea of the Internet?
It would be purely hypothetical pondering if not for GDPR which bring a lot of mess to countries outside EU and cut off some EU users from the content which they could otherwise consume.
Unless regulators get their stuff together reasonably quick, we may likely end up in some more encrypted and decentralized version of the Internet which makes governments less relevant. I don't mind.
In this particular case, it was that Huawei was purchasing US-made products to which sanctions applied and exporting them to Iran.
I highly doubt that Huawei executives were unaware that this was against US policy and law; they just thought that the US would only punish the corporation and not the people involved, without realizing that the arm of US law extends to a whole web of countries that have extradition treaties with it.
See also the German VW executives who are very restricted in where they can travel to based on their crimes in the diesel emissions scandal.
You can't be sure, and that's a risk you'll always take when going to a country China can extradite you from. Singling China out is silly though, any country can do this, some just have more political clout to pull it off.
For instance, Thailand sought extradition of those insulting their king abroad.
Every country has things the culture is sensitive of. That might be child pornography for the USA, or drugs for Malaysia, or comments about the king for Thailand.
They all have long prison sentences/death in their country, and light/no sentences in most of the rest of the world.
All countries have tried to go after people breaking their culturally sensitive thing abroad, with varying levels of success.
>Every country has things the culture is sensitive of. That might be child pornography for the USA, or drugs for Malaysia, or comments about the king for Thailand.
That doesn't make them morally equivalent. You can't defend 30 years in prison for being mean.
Morally equivalent? Who is the arbiter of moral valence?
This sense of moral superiority or having a better judgement than others, is exactly the property that blinds individuals and entire cultures to the absurdity of their own morals.
Claiming moral superiority is different from judging morality. As humans we judge morality through our reason. It is reasonable, irrespective of culture, to conclude that child pornography is worse than saying something mean about a king.
Have a peruse through Michel Foucault's "Discipline and Punish". It's impossible to take these moral absolutism claims seriously after spending any time studying the history of crime and morality.
Almost every culture at almost every point in history prevalently believes they have morals figured out and anything that came before them or from elsewhere is absurd.
I don't believe in strict moral relativism. Some things are self evident, e.g., child abuse is an objectively worse crime than is speaking out against one's government (the latter of which shouldn't be a crime at all.) If we can't agree on that then I don't think we'll ever agree on anything.
You do not have a right to not be arrested in China. Why would you think that? They can arrest you for any reason at any time if you are on their land.
You also don't have a right to not be arrested in America. Why would you think that? They can arrest you for any reason at any time if you are on their land.
If you're outside America, you don't have a right not to be blown to pieces by a killer robot (aka "drone"). Why would you think that? They can blow you to pieces for any reason at any time no matter where you are.
> You also don't have a right to not be arrested in America.
That's a given, mate. The commentor made the ridiculous claim that he had a right not to be arrested in China for breaking Chinese laws. No individual has that right.
The passage I responded to was
> How sure can I be if my company is not breaking any Chinese laws? Would it by fine if I get arrested for breaking those when I'm on a trip to Asia?
The answer is that you cannot be sure. The chinese government has every ability to arrest you for crimes committed elsewhere. They have every ability to change their laws at any time to enable their arrest. No one will even blink if they abandoned their legal system entirely to arrest just you for nothing at all in particular. There is no 'rule' saying they can only arrest you for things done on their soil; or that arrests of a non-citizen must be just; or really anything.
This is true of America as well. Why wouldn't it be? We're speaking on the level of sovereign nations.
> If you're outside America, you don't have a right not to be blown to pieces by a killer robot (aka "drone"). Why would you think that? They can blow you to pieces for any reason at any time no matter where you are.
This is another topic entirely and completely non-germaine to the thread.
One way to to be certain is to not travel or do business with any Chinese company. In this case, Huawei was selling us technology to Iran so it became a target.
Whenever you get in the cross-hairs of any country and you travel abroad, there is a non-zero risk of you being extradited.
Which is why a) China hasn't managed to get a whole lot of extradition treaties signed, and b) those treaties generally have exemptions for crimes that are considered "political".
The unusual thing is that the Canada-US extradition treaty allows extradition on such a "political" offense, but that's probably mostly down to the US and Canada having the same position on Iran.
Also important to note that extradition generally requires that the request be for a crime similar or recognized in the requested country. The treaties usually state or outline the crimes or characteristics that qualify.
Countries with "incompatible" legal systems generally don't have extradition treaties, but if they do you typically have to be charged with something that's a serious crime in both countries.
Did you read the article? US is alleging Huawei was shipping "U.S.-origin" products to Iran - probably U.S. made components for Huawei devices/technology.
What "authority" do you need to ask for a favor from a friendly ally? Canada also has active economic sanctions against Iran.
Hi there, just want to remind you of the HN guidelines:
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
I'm not sure if you're joking, but in case you're serious: I'm not :)
I'm merely reminding. People forget lists of rules written in pages they don't frequently visit. It's no big deal. Fun fact, though: the guidelines say nothing about telling people to read the guidelines themselves ;)
I have mixed feelings about this rule because it genuinely feels like the majority of comments come from people who aren't reading most of the article.
Sure, and I think that works here. But what do you say when the entire comment doesn't make any sense because it was formed from an incorrect view of what the article was really about, like in the example I linked? I guess "do nothing" is the option I choose, still frustrating.
I think the more important question is: if someone is talking out of their ass, is it worth continuing to talk to them? In RL, other factors may apply, but in a forum like this...?
Unless ofc you end up with an interesting response anyways ;) (note: did you read tfa does not constitute interesting unless your standards are disturbingly low). Imo the minimum is a good backhanded insult thrown in
But Iran is a sovereign nation, bravely resisting US/Israeli attempts to turn the entire Middle East into a flaming hell pit. Surely Canada should have told them to go and take a flying leap?
Canada has a sizable stake in the oil economy too, thus they also profit from US shenanigans. It's just easier to sit on the sidelines and let the US throw resources at that dumpster fire and than going and doing it themselves.
Canada's oil interests are opposed to the US's. The whole Trans Mountain pipeline was intended to export Canadian tar-sands oil to the swelling Chinese economy before fossil fuel exports have to be stopped.
> Can somebody explain to me on what authority the US can arrest a Chinese national on Canadian soil
Canada arrested him, not the US.
If you mean, what is the authority for the US to ask Canada to do that, well, asking doesn't require any special authority; OTOH, the US does have an extradition treaty with Canada [0], and while trade sanctions violations don't appear to be an enumerated offense covered by the extradition treaty, sanctions violations tend to also involve false declarations and certain kinds of frauds, which are covered.
The article suggests she took US-made products and routed them to Iran through Huawei. That's a US crime, and the US can issue a warrant for her arrest, and if she shows up in a country with extradition to the US, she can get arrested. Which is apparently what happened.
In case you were wondering why you were downvoted (as I used to be), generally one (of the few) good thing about this forum is that personal opinions that don't add value arent encouraged.
This only works one way though. No one arrested Ronald Regan for selling guns to the contras to fund the revolution in Iran. The US gets to do this because might makes right.
> Regean had sovereign immunity, so he could not be personally tried.
Sounds fair. Arrest businessmen because it's practical, don't arrest Regean because it won't look good
I just learned, thanks Wikipedia, that Jamal Khashoggi (journalist murdered in Turkey) who has recently been dominating the news is the nephew of the arms dealer king pen, Adnan Khashoggi, behind the Brokers of Death. It appears Adnan and our current US president have had a prior business relationship (according to Wikipedia).
A good lesson about the value of networking. Similar things are all over the politics, business or even arts and people inclined to believe in conspiracies love to dig these but most of the time it's just the effect of having a way to meet people that are already in.
It doesnt, that why they asked their friend to do it.
Some times the US later finds out that the arresting country’s courts found no authority or legality for their own country to arrest the person and wont continue with extradition. This happened in New Zealand.
So typically a bit more research is needed and they find a way to get it right in future cases.
Another thing the US does is send an FBI agent to merely observe the arrest, to ensure that it is later compatible with US courts as well. Its a lot of organizations to make happy but the US is essentially one of the only organizations with the resources and interest to bother.
It is an interesting outcome of the nation state concept.
The tone of the question reads angry and incredulous, not curious, hence the downvotes.
You will also note that the poster of the question never came back to acknowledge the work people put into replying and explaining the situation. I believe that eduction wasn't the intent here.
Indeed I don't believe the speaker was asking in good faith. This is why I did not engage them directly, and only opined when the matter of downvotes came up - an explanation of the downvotes may prove helpful.
Really? There are extradition agreements between Canada and he US... let’s say you murder someone. You can’t just leave the country and expect the new host to not care!
What she is alleged to have done would be a crime in Canada too so her nationality isn’t relevant.
It seems the only allegations are against Huawei, of which sh is just one of many board members, and there's a good chance she wasn't even involved with the deal the allegation is concerning.
She's the Chief Financial Officer which means she is at the top. She is an extension of the company and responsible for the companies financial decisions - which would include concerns related to sanctions.
> You can’t just leave the country and expect the new host to not care!
That's not a fair comparison. If any law was broken, it was definitely not broken on US soil. It would be like US arresting people that it thinks committed murders in China.
> What she is alleged to have done would be a crime in Canada too so her nationality isn’t relevant.
I think it is. It's also relevant where the crime occured. e.g., lets say some small country decides that it's illegal to wear grey color pants. Then, can they morally arrest any person anywhere in the world that they think wore grey color pants at any point in the time at any place in the world?
What I would like to know is how deals like this go down? Like does the US have some sort of agreement/incentive with Canada for them to spend their own effort on this?
The US calling Canada on the phone and asking them to arrest someone they want seems too.. easy? I imagine there's a limit where goodwill only gets you so far, and then some sort of compensation is expected. Maybe there's a lot of backdoor Gov2Gov money funneling or economic deals, but idk. This seems like stuff that is opaque to average citizens.
> All extradition treaties currently in force require foreign requests for extradition to be submitted through diplomatic channels, usually from the country's embassy in Washington to the Department of State. Many treaties also require that requests for provisional arrest be submitted through diplomatic channels, although some permit provisional arrest requests to be sent directly to the Department of Justice. The Department of State reviews foreign extradition demands to identify any potential foreign policy problems and to ensure that there is a treaty in force between the United States and the country making the request, that the crime or crimes are extraditable offenses, and that the supporting documents are properly certified in accordance with 18 U.S.C. § 3190. If the request is in proper order, an attorney in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser prepares a certificate attesting to the existence of the treaty, etc., and forwards it with the original request to the Office of International Affairs.
There are three key stages to the Canadian extradition process:
The Minister of Justice must determine whether to authorize the commencement of extradition proceedings in the Canadian courts by issuing an “Authority to Proceed” ;
Where an Authority to Proceed has been issued, the Canadian courts must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the person’s committal for extradition; and
Where the person is committed for extradition, the Minister of Justice must personally decide whether to order the person’s surrender to the foreign state.
A person sought for extradition may appeal their committal and seek judicial review of the Minister’s surrender order.
In all cases, the conduct for which extradition is sought must be considered criminal in both the requesting country and in Canada. This is known as “dual criminality”.
Central Authorities from outside Canada are encouraged to contact the IAG to determine what is required to make an extradition request to Canada, including the evidentiary requirements, and whether provisional arrest is appropriate in a given situation.
Sanctions governing trade with Iran have been codified through multiple acts of Congress and are overseen under the Departments of Treasury, Commerce, and State, under Title 31 statute, with additional regulatory aspects within Titles 15 and 22. The statute (31 CFR 560.205) makes reexportation of US goods from a third party country by a non-US person explicitly illegal under US law.
To the second aspect of your question, Canada is under treaty obligation to cooperate with extradition requests issued by US courts for fugitive apprehension, and Canadian courts will rule on whether the extradition is consistent with Canadian law before transferring the suspect to US federal custody.
A trade embargo does nothing if any middleman can funnel goods and money across by simply misrepresenting or omitting details about where the goods are going.
If I’m wholesaling Cisco routers and they show up in Syria or Iran, and Cisco and I can prove we didn’t know how they got there , that still doesn’t make it okay.
You can still be held responsible. The law requires you to check on who the final customer is and to take some actions on any suspicious transaction. Someone will come knocking on your door and you will need to show documentation to support your assertion that you "couldn't have known". If a product is subject to a trade embargo you can't just "sell it to a middleman" and turn a blind eye.
Wasn't really aimed at either. But maybe to answer the question: if Huawei acts as a middleman that buys embargoed goods from the US and then sells them to a country under embargo then under US laws both Huawei and whoever sells to Huawei can be held responsible (individuals and the company as a whole), the place the actions take place aren't relevant as far as I know. Even companies selling their own product to embargoed countries without any US involvement face economic sanctions under US laws (though their executives presumably would not be arrested.)
If HP (A US company) sells to a middleman without knowing who the final customer is for embargoed goods then HP and its executives can be held legally responsible.
This is mostly based on mandatory training I had to go through while working for a US company. I am not a lawyer ;)
If embargoes were trivial to get around they'd be pointless. The intent of embargo laws are to as much as possible, within the full power of the US, prevent goods from getting to a certain country regardless of any other variable. Embargoes are pretty extreme actions, there are only a few targets for those in general and the embargo usually targets specific goods.
The real answer is quite straight forward. In the end international and governmental actions come down to clout, which in turn comes down to power. The governments with the most power will always do whatever they want to do, and impose their desires on other governments.
The crackdown on online poker was a striking example of this. To give cliff notes the US, heavily influenced by casino lobbyists, decided to ban online poker. Online poker sites were operating in foreign countries obeying all laws domestically applied to them. In spite of the fact that sites were operating within all laws that domestically applied to them, the US decided to act because they refused to overtly ban US players. In an extremely rapid action the US simultaneously confiscated the domains of these sites, and executed arrest warrants on many of the involved individuals including surreptitious raids and extraditions from places including South/Central America, and froze numerous bank accounts around the world including in places such as Ireland.
The US is powerful enough that its own desire is sufficient authority to enact any action. Guantanamo Bay is a great example. This is not a just a US property under US law. It is operated as a US territory but mostly independent of US legal authority. The Geneva Convention is disregarded as convenient. For instance the three prisoners that were reported as having committed suicide (which would result in condemnation in Islamic belief) were allegedly tortured to death at a secret facility in Guantanamo, known as 'Camp No' (as in, no it does not exist), detached from the main camp. [1]
Everything that you need to know to evaluate international relations can be learned in a school yard.
Canada: 5'4 @110 lb kid in glasses with a pocket protector. Very smart. Has adoring crowd that claps.
US: the 6'1 220lb line backer built in the same school yard
Arrested Chinese exec: 4'10, 78lb daughter of a family from a different school somewhere over there. That school has lots of those like the US, US sometimes exchanges words with that school but they are somewhere over there.
Girls shows up in a schoolyard with Canada and the US. US tells Canada: "Give her to me. I have some business with her".
This seems likely. Any officer of the company might do in this circumstance. She might be the only one currently accessible in a country friendly to US extradition.
> If the whole company is suspected of breaking the embargo, why is just the CFO arrested?
If the basis of extradition is fraud by a corporate officer (which seems to be one of the more likely offenses in a trade sanctions case actually covered by the extradition treaty, as sanctions violations themselves are not), then the question is how many corporate officers of Huawei are in Canada and exposed to extradition?
It is a big deal. It's not everyday that an exec of a major company gets arrested - especially one so politically connected.
I'm guessing this is just a continuation of the trade war we've been having with china and we told the canadians to arrest the CFO to send a message to china. She was probably targeted because she was important enough to matter but not important enough to go to war over.
It'll be interesting how china responds. I doubt china would go after one of our execs but I wouldn't want to be a canadian executive in china.
A shell company was setup to do the deal, and she helped setup the shell company and was on the board of directors of the shell company, and was the shell company's corporate secretary.
I would not look forward to being an American businessman abroad in China right now. I think we're all used to the fiction that we live in a world that's totally governed by fairness and laws. That's been a pretty useful fiction for a long time, and in (some) of the developed world that's basically been how it's worked.
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.
Unfortunately, this is a pretty safe bet. That's why I always recommend that if you are going to go to China to do business, you should go with the goal of making people over there extremely rich. This will give you some protection.
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.
> 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.
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.
But on general grounds, why a Chinese company should comply with sanctions between US and Iran? And why a fourth country is arresting Chinese citizens violating US rules?
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.
Somehow they got the US technology in order to sell it to Iran. I'm no legal expert, but there was probably an assumption during that transaction that they wouldn't be selling it to Iran, which they violated.
(which is exactly why this is different than them simply doing business with Iran in the first place)
No one at ZTE was criminally charged. Though the indictment could be sealed and we may not know until they travel to a country that complies with American arrest request.
Not that easy, as most international trade is denominated in USD, and nominally flows through the US, and makes it subject to US jurisdiction. Which is one reason there is a growing push for denominating trade in EUR or CNY instead.
USD transactions don't have to flow through the US, either nominally or in actuality.
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.
Sweden doesn’t view that as a crime so they don’t have any interest in further oppression. Many western countries will arrest foreigners that attempt to use their country as a hiding place. There are extradition agreements that outline this - the long arm of the law.
> why a Chinese company should comply with sanctions between US and Iran? And why a fourth country is arresting Chinese citizens violating US rules?
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.
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.
> 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.
No Canada is arresting on behalf of US. On the contrary, Huawei is building 5g infra for Canada.
> 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.
Why, yes, I'd rather we didn't do business with a country that has close to 1M people in forced reeducation camps. I am OK with not profiting from some things. A dystopian "social credit" police state, for example, is apparently very high on my list of places not to invest in, be associated with, or deal with at all.
Now thats a moral argument. In a realpolitikal world, X aggresses against Y because its in X's self interest, not because Y have been bad. Under this model, China _is_ suffering from aggressions just not from Apple/etc.
The US and China should behave morally. I disagree with the real politks strategy. I'm sure many countries want to behave that way, I'm glad there is still the rule of law in the US (even as our president tries to subvert it). The US doesn't always act morally, but often it does - our laws against us companies bribing people in other countries are a good thing even though it makes it harder for us companies to operate in other places.
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.
> Do you want to hurt US market/USD ? Because thats what use of your justifications will do.
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.
Its not just US vs China. Its US vs Market. Its the hand of market that US need to watch out for. Everytime a powerful entity acts like a madman, it gets weaker. Soon or later it will receive 1000th cut which may be one too many.
You're exaggerating what this tiny incident means to the market. Historically this doesn't show up on the list at all, it's just barely a one day top 10 business story.
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.
You have very restricted definition of market. Market != Stock Market. Slap of market does not mean you go down, it means the profits goes to your compititors. Rise of China is textbook example here. China made the bank, while everyone who did not have compititive labor regulations got slapped for it. Globalisation basically means States getting slapped for not being competitive.
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.
So if some Western company would trade with Ukraine or Georgia in violation of Russian sanctions, should their representatives be arrested and extradited to Russia?
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?
If they were doing business in Russia and buying Russian-made tech under an agreement that the tech not be sold to Russian-sanctioned countries, and then they sold the tech to those countries in violation of that agreement... That might be a valid comparison.
And if they were in a country that cooperated with Russia to extradite criminals, this exact thing might happen to them.
> So if some Western company would trade with Ukraine or Georgia in violation of Russian sanctions, should their representatives be arrested and extradited to Russia?
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.
Well, if one were to wake up one day and find that another nation had arisen, say, one that is world's large manufacturer and that a vast number of companies rely on and where a large number of powerful Westerners happen to wind-up at one point or another, well, however far-fetched this might seem, this situation might put a wrench in this idea of US hegemony.
I mean, I know it's 1999 but who knows what will happen in the years to come? /:s
In my post I never said there were going to be no consequences to US behavior. I never said anything attempting to justify US behavior. I never said the US would remain the sole superpower. I never said China wouldn't eventually rise to the same level of global power that the US now has, or even beyond that.
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.
> 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.
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.
For a similar reason is why google had move all of their employees out of Russia a few years back.
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.
Really. How valid is that? If an American tourist uses 20USD to pay for a meal in Montreal or Toronto (which happens a lot), what's the logic that this falls under US jurisdiction.
I mean, it's obviously valid because this incident happened (and many other events that show the same validity). The logic is that the US says any transactions involving USD fall under US jurisdiction, because it's their currency--that is, the USD only has any value at all because the US government says it's legal tender.
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.
Well for one thing, Canadian (and many other) extradition treaties require the notion of dual criminality - the thing you're being extradited for has to also be a crime in Canada.
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.
A lot of the extraterritorial power of US jurisdiction is due to the fact that a lot of international commerce is denominated in USD. Matt Levine writes about this occasionally in his informative and amusing news letter "Money Matters" [1], for example [2]:
> 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.
You are going to say all that without pointing out that the US and Canada are fighting espionage, and China will look for an innocent business person in response and that's just totally ok with everyone here?
Or, you know, China could get rid of one of the US's spies there too. It's not like we don't do espionage... We're probably the best at it given what Snowden showed us...
Seriously. It's this fiction that makes me believe that, despite it's flaws, America (along with other democratic countries) is a beacon compared to the rest of the world. A country locking up a foreigner for breaking their laws is so different than a country locking up said foreigner out of retaliation, which is what I imagine China will end up doing.
Worth noting that the lines are a little bit blurred in America. I don't know if you grew up in the US/your nationality, but I've noticed a lot more things feel questionable to me about America since I've been an expat for a few years.
This is one of the most interesting cases I've seen:
The problem is this, you're always violating some law.
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.
I'm curious why you mention "small operators" twice here.
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).
Which is what makes America, with elected and political DA's, so much less of a beacon compared to normal democratic countries where that would be considered insane.
I think the above poster's point is that there are so many laws on the books that effectively everyone is above said ceiling. Thus, selective enforcement is functionally identical to arbitrary arrest.
>The problem is this, you're always violating some law.
"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."
Look for laws to be enforced cops need to be aware of them.
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.
It's just a bit odd that highly specific examples like this make it into written law. A pretty clear example of what happens when you have a Government that can be heavily influenced by corporate lobbying.
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.
It's not, and I never said that it was; quite the opposite actually.
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.
My apologies, perhaps you need to elaborate on what you meant when you wrote:
> 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.
If you have a vauger law you get all sorts of arguments that "well, cheddar doesn't have to be cheddared" and "10% meat is enough in meat sauce" etc, etc.
I don't understand your argument. You seem to be opposed to specificity in the written prohibition. So what's the alternative? You'd prefer it if FDA regulations didn't have the force of law? Or would you prefer it if FDA regulations were secret, unwritten, unavailable for cheddar manufacturers and cheddar manufacturer compliance officers to examine? Neither of those seem like good solutions.
It's called industry standards, and it's common practice and already in place in written legislation.
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.
Industry standards don't have the force of law unless they are given the force of law.
> 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?
It's not about local cops picking you for some arcane law. It's about anyone in government having the ability to find something to fuck you with at any time they want to.
That's not actually true. The cited regulation permits cheddar cheese produced "by the procedure set forth in paragraph (a)(3) of this section, or by any other procedure which produces a finished cheese having the same physical and chemical properties." 21 C.F.R. § 133.113(a)(1) (emphasis added), available athttps://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/133.113.
Um, no. Sometimes you have to go tit-for-tat to rein in unreasonable countries who try to apply their laws beyond their reach to things that should be none of their business.
If you want to do business with the US, there are certain conditions they'd like to enforce (e.g. don't resell their stuff to a list of countries). That's simple.
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?
Pretty sure she would not travel to Canada knowing that an arrest warrant is outstanding. Why is it kept secret? Is it that important to nab her? Could be a huge headache for Canada.
> It is absolutely crazy to think that US law should apply worldwide
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.
> It is absolutely crazy to think that US law should apply worldwide.
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:
While the US won’t prosecute you for stealing in, say, Argentina, there are laws on the books that prohibit all citizens from doing business with certain nations, period.
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.
But other countries might have similar rules too. For example, Russia has sanctions against Ukraine, and Western companies generally ignore them. Also, Russia has Internet control laws and companies like Google are disrespectfully not complying with them.
Also, under Russian laws companies like Google or Facebook must keep Russian users' data in Russia; they are not complying.
If an USA or EU pays a bribe in Argentina, they may be prosecuted in their origin country. Also, the legislation about bribes abroad is very different in USA than in the EU, so when there is an important bidding process where there are companies from both sites, there are always problems and accusations afterwards. See for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siemens#2005_and_continuing:_w...
Maybe the most shocking example of bad UN sanctions pushed by the US:
Madeleine Albright says 500,000 dead Iraqi Children was "worth it" wins Medal of Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omnskeu-puE
Canada wants trade with the US more than trade with Iran and thus bows to the US.
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.
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.
Yeah, and "thou shalt not make deals with brown people in Persia" is a totally different law from from "thou shalt not collaborate with an imperialist".
If the US doesn't like the way Huawei does business, they are free to ban them from selling products in their country. Bringing criminal charges is still ridiculous.
When you agree to a set of terms, and then violate that set of terms, you are on the hook.
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.
How the US claims to have criminal jurisdiction over a Chinese company selling to Iran is beyond me. I am suggesting the US ban them from doing business in the US (not "polite reminders") if they wish. i.e the consequence of breaking business sanctions should be prohibition from doing business.
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.
USA will go to a foreign country and topple their government for violating US business interests (not laws). Being an American might be OK, but America isn't a beacon for citizens of other countries.
I mean Syria, Libya, Iraq are some recent examples. There could also be a discussion about Ukraine and how much did US help to topple the government there but that is a more speculative example. The middle eastern examples are quite clear cut. I do agree US is doing this less than during the cold war.
Assad getting overthrown was related to the big geopolitical confrontation with Russia (cold war has never really ended fyi). It was a move against Putin, trying to cut off his ally, as well as secure new pipeline to Europe to damage Russia economically.
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.
> but America isn't a beacon for citizens of other countries.
“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.
When the Roman Empire found Jesus and slowly devolved into the Roman Catholic Church over the next thousand years, its "war on paganism" spread throughout Europe and Asia, with a death toll that is hard to estimate, but easily in the millions if you add up all the crusades and inquisitions.
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"?
China can always pass a necessary law so that Western citizen will become guilty in full accordance with the law. And US can do the same. There is no difference.
US toppled democratically-elected govts in other countries, one of which indirectly created the Islamic Iran of today, its not a idealistic beacon of hope, its just the current world hegemon with 800 military bases all over the world, the British empire of its time:
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.
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.
I mostly agree with you, but this isn't exactly a case where the CFO can expect to be tried by a jury of their peers. Enforcing international law (or laws with international scope) in a single country that isn't one's own is a little problematic.
“Jury of [your] peers” is not a phrase that has legal significance in the US. The sixth amendment requires “an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed“.[0]
The indicting US Attorney will be have to show that some element of an alleged crime took place within the United States.
When exporting a product from the US, you are bound by the export laws of the US, if you then violate those laws (by shipping that product to Iran, say), then you can expect to be prosecuted by the US. If you then enter a country that has an extradition treaty with the US, you may find yourself on an unexpected plane ride to the US ...
I think that other countries should improve their cooperation and arrest Western citizens breaking their laws. So that Western citizens and companies that break Chinese, Russian or Iranian laws and violate their trading sanctions, cannot evade a fair trial.
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.
Concerning realpolitik, this isn't even the first time it's been used on a telecom executive in the US.
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.
I also wonder what this is going to do to Canada's real estate market considering that Canada has basically been a "safe haven" for Chinese nationals to flock to basically launder their money.
On the other hand, Canadians who have helped Chinese people circumvent Chinese capital controls might want to think carefully about their holiday plans.
It's sad how this has become a fact because it's insinuated enough times in the press by the same few reporters. First it was Chinese foreigners buying up all the real estate, but that was proven false. Now, it's all these foreigners are laundering their money. Yes, a few (although the RCMP is having trouble with their money laundering case) but not all. The press simplifies and that becomes the reality that everyone believes. I had a coworker mention this "fact" after hearing it on the radio. Ugh. Reminds me of the weapons of mass destruction debacle.
Just to remind you that a 1000 something square ft apartment in Shanghai's perimeters costs like 5 million rmb, that's 50 times the average income there, and in better areas, it easily costs 10 or 20 millions plus.
Is there any credible source the other way around?
How many foreign nationals own property in Vancouver? How many of those properties are unoccupied? I can't remember where I spotted reporting on those two questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the city publishes real estate transaction data such that the number of foreign purchases can be gathered. I remember a very small portion reported.
Google is your friend. Metro Vancouver has 9.2% of unoccupied homes and Vancouver itself has 8.2%, them being highest and second highest in Canada. Chinese drug mafia also allegedly moved more than $5bn through flipping properties in Vancouver.
It's strange that owners would let the homes go vacant rather than rent them via a property manager. While the article seemed well-researched, one missing bit was who purchased the mansions they kept mentioning. They knew the builder, so perhaps they could have asked.
Is it though? Some of them just want to move their money outside of China incase something happens and they don't really care about anything else. While renting them via a property manager is a better financial decision, i'm don't know if you they care about it that much they are paying $x above asking price. Also, this might be their vacation home.
Though it's not. There is a property management company out of Hong Kong/China that owns 30 condos in my unit and rents it out to tenants. I work near One Bloor and if you see the demographic over there it's all non-english speaking Asian people. Heck the Nordstorm rack in that Condo accepts WePay. Where else have you seen that in Toronto?
A study from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released Wednesday found that 68 per cent of Vancouver respondents, 48 per cent of Toronto respondents and 42 per cent of Montreal respondents believe foreign buyers are having "a lot of influence" on their markets and are driving up home prices.
The insight into perceptions around foreign buyers that 30,000 respondents in the three cities shared with the Crown Corporation between September and mid-October is in stark contrast with recent data from Statistics Canada showing foreign buyers only own 4.8 per cent of Vancouver properties and 3.4 per cent of homes in Toronto.
----
The truth is that we're house horny enough to not need any outside help to increase the price of real estate. According to Statistics Canada, 69.0% of households are owner (https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-014-x/99-0...). While anecdotal data can be comforting, the data doesn't support the thesis.
While I'm sympathetic to the claim that foreign buyers didn't influence the price significantly, the ~5% ownership figure is surprisingly high. I wonder what portion it is in other cities, ones that aren't complaining.
So i read the highlights of the statcan link you posted.
a) it's from 2011, that's 7 years ago.
b) Just being house owners doesn't mean a lot. There are non-Canadians (neither PR nor Citizens) buying condo's/houses with 35+% downpayment. Our government allows that, which is kind of mind boggling. You'll see a lot of international students living in condo's that their parents have bought.
I know this is unrelated point, but also effing Airbnb has screwed up the market for renters/first time home buyers.
I don't know which Stats Canada statistics the Financial Post article refers to (I'm sure they have more than one measure), but here's Stats Canada putting non-resident ownership at over 7% in Vancouver (https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/180625/dq180...).
Whatever the exact number is, I don't think you can draw a conclusion just from that measure alone. The percentage of total properties owned by non-residents is less important than the percentage of recent sales that went to non-residents.
Some completely made up and simplified numbers to illustrate my point:
Let's say 10% of all properties in Vancouver have been sold on the market in the last 8 years, and 25% of those went to foreign buyers. That would only account for an increase in 2.5% of non-resident ownership. That by itself doesn't sound significant, but 25% of all sales going to buyers many of which are price insensitive is going to have a massive effect on prices.
Basically any time someone who has more money than you do purchases something you can't afford, it's automatically assumed that they are laundering their money?
It's difficult to take housing issues in Vancouver seriously because paranoia nonsense like "all Chinese are money launderers" just wouldn't stop coming. As soon as a discussion happens, it gets swarmed by (dare I say it) bigots and immediately derailed.
The Chinese buying real estate property in Vancouver or Toronto don't care about house prices so it won't do anything. They are doing it to secure their children's outside of China, they are not trying to flip those properties. I don't think they care if the house they bought for their kids loses in value, it's still a house and the kids can live there.
Nothing new here! She appears to have violated the US sanctions. Many people have ended up in prison for lesser offenses, some of whom were not even aware of their crime. The story of John Roth is really informative. He was indicted and jailed simply because of hiring two Iranian and Chinese students.
https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/knoxville/press-releases/2...
Maybe! Probably he should have known better, but that's beside the point. One can end up in jail by simply hiring nationals from sanctioned countries. This case is more clearcut in comparison. She was actually involved in exporting American technology to Iran.
"Exporting" technology for these sorts of legal purposes can be as simple as allowing a foreign national to see a document in passing. Punishment can range from "good job admitting it promptly" to decades in prison.
The allegations surrounding Huawei are much more substantial than that - the export of equipment for building serious internet infrastructure. An example of past allegations:
> Meng isn't a stranger to issues with sanctions. In 2013, Reuters found that Meng served on the board of Skycom Tech, a company that offered to sell HP equipment to Iran in late 2010 with Huawei's apparent blessing -- 13 pages of the proposal were marked as "Huawei confidential." The deal reportedly never went through, but it could have landed at least Huawei and Skycom in trouble. It's unclear if the arrest has a connection to the 2010 sale or is based solely on separate allegations.
If a deal like that went through, that's a pretty intuitive and straightforward violation of sanctions.
Hmm. You keep forgetting the important bit. Let me help you out again.
"One can end up in jail by simply hiring nationals from sanctioned countries and then giving them access to documents pertaining to US military technology."
This doesn't just happen to any random employer or any random professor. It happens when you are working for the DoD and you do something you shouldn't. If you don't want to run afoul of such laws, be better informed or don't take government contracts.
>and then giving them access to documents pertaining to US military technology
Not true! Once a technology is deemed to fall under ITAR or EAR, the export regulations kick in. Doesn't matter if the technology belongs to the government, a large company, a startup, or a university lab. And for obvious reasons, sometimes people are not aware this fact.
Random technology does not fall under ITAR or EAR. They are specific regulations that are pertinent to a very particular industry. If you are building military defense technology, you should probably be familiar those regulations and act accordingly.
> “Wanzhou Meng was arrested in Vancouver on December 1. She is sought for extradition by the United States, and a bail hearing has been set for Friday,” Justice department spokesperson Ian McLeod said in a statement to The Globe and Mail. “As there is a publication ban in effect, we cannot provide any further detail at this time. The ban was sought by Ms. Meng.
I don't understand the last bit there about a "publicaton ban." So, in Canada, a suspect can request that some info of their arrest be withheld? I googled and came up with https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/victims-victimes/factshe..., but it doesn't make much sense to me since her name was published? So how would a publication ban protect her identity? I guess there could be others involved that she was protecting and not wanting the names released?
As in it could turn into a cause celebre and run amok due to the politics involved.
Likely the cause celebre might not just be affecting court decisions but cause external effects like other clashes in society so best to keep it quiet to not risk random crises.
I believe (based on the fact she was arrested Dec. 1) that her name was part of the tight information security but once it gets out that she has been arrested the news are allowed to publish that. Moreover, It also appears these may be international papers and I don’t know enough to say they have to or don’t have to follow the ban.
A tl;dr to address some of the obvious questions here:
In 2013 she set up a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom Tech. That company (attempted to) purchase HP computers from the United States and resell them to Iran. The deal did not involve Huawei products, but many of the documents related to the deal were labeled "Huawei confidential" indicating they created the shell company to conceal their involvement.
It's kinda scary that the US can do anything about straw purchases. US company sells to HK company, the stuff becomes property of HK company, US should be completely out of the goddamn picture at this point, HK company sells to Iran, done. The US govt must not be able to do anything about the HK company's intention to resell.
Ah, if it's not buying with the intention to resell that's illegal, but the resale itself, it means nothing.
I just think it's weird that the US law handles the resale case. Like they think they have authority over the whole world.
The US supposedly loves private property. But this transitive application of trade restrictions sounds like complete disrespect of private property. (And honestly even just any trade restrictions in general…)
My question was significantly higher level than that. The United States exists to further the objectives of the United States. You made the statement 'The US govt must not be able to...'.
What does that statement mean given that (1) the United States is most certainly able to, (2) the United States merely looks after its own interests, and (3) there is no (earthly at least) authority which can actually judge the United states's actions in this case.
Thus, what does it mean to say '<insert country here> must not'? By what standard?
Every other nation has trade embargo's as well. And when they want to arrest someone in the US for violating those, the US will do just that. People are a little overly obsessed with the US being behind it.
Because the Computers are the property of HK company at that time, so the question is do US has any further rights on what is being done with them.
This being HP computers, it may be possible that they might even have been made in China/HK themselves.
What if it was used second hand computers, aren't their rightful owners free to dispose them at their will without deferment to any trade restrictions sanctioned by the country of their origin.
Take Arms. Lets say the US has an arms embargo with a country like Iran. You would agree that it definitely is a violation (and it would be of many international treaties) to purchase US arms as a Hong Kong (replace with whatever country) firm and then resell them to Iran. Now, with computers being the next front of warfare, computer tech is treated similar to arms.
The whole movie 'War Dogs' is about people doing this with Soviet Arms, repackaging them, and selling them to the US. It was illegal, hence they got locked up at the end
This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos. I understand that prohibiting resale can be abused - it's illegal to prohibit resale under many circumstances in the US under antitrust law for example. But that only applies within the US market. The example here is a company deliberately breaching an embargo. If we allowed these sorts of sales then this could prompt the US to take even more drastic measures to enforce its sanctions, like blockading Iranian ports.
>This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos.
Yes, that's true. The US embargo policies undermine the prosperity of foreign and predominantly poor nations (including Cuba), the freedom of companies to engage in business with third partners, and the sovereignty of other nations, in this case, Canada.
It is a shame that the US can still bully businesses and countries around like this, and it is an even bigger shame that Canada complies.
Yes, it's attacking their prosperity. That's the whole point of embargos: to attack the prosperity of countries that are doing bad things (like developing nuclear weapons). We choose to attack countries prosperity because it's drastically less harmful than attacking them militarily. For that reason it's crucial that those who circumvent embargos are held responsible.
To use an analogy, if the US is a cop the embargos are her taser and military intervention are her handgun. Outside of exigent circumstances she should prefer the former to the latter. While it's worthwhile to criticize unnecessary usages of the former, removing the less lethal option means plenty of bad actors get shot when getting tased would have resolved the threat.
This is not because the US is the big dog in the world (well okay, that's a factor, but not the main factor). This is because these things are always reciprocal cooperation agreements. The US goes to Canada (or some other country) and says "Hey, if you'll help us enforce our embargoes, we'll help you enforce yours." And the other country says "Deal!"
EDIT: Above is the carrot. There are also sticks that can be brought to bear, like import tariffs.
sorry about that, I duplicate posted by accident after realizing I hadnt whitelisted hn for cookies when switching back to firefox. dupe deleted.
but seriously, just google ITAR violations and youll find a litany of other american companies that have been made to pay fines for violations and allowed to continue business as normal with no sanctions, no boycotts.
its just Huawei for some reason that sticks in the craw of DC, and has for months now starting with senators insisting they should be boycotted, to a defense procurement boycott that extends to DOD contractors, and eventually the evangelism of a boycott that extends to AT&T and others.
Im genuinely curious what caused it? because the trade violation just seems convenient.
You should actually read the article your shared. Relations have improved under Trudeau. It was the previous Harper government under which relations deteriorated.
Going off on a tangent, but the hypocrisy around the Middle East is so brazen, it's embarrassing. I am by no means a fan of the Iranian regime. It's as rotten as all the autocraticies and theocraties in the region. However, to claim Iran is irredeemable for supporting Assad while at the same time inking arm deals and strategizing with Saudi Arabia is an insult to our intelligence.
Suspicious how this comes right on the heels of negative publicity about Huawei's IP theft and possible infiltration of global telecom networks. I suspect someone might be wanting to apply pressure and forcing Huawei to respond.
Is she herself accused of breaking the Iran sanctions or is it Huawei, and as the CFO she's being held accountable? I can't tell from this article or the one from NYT. And it seems like that would be a big difference, and if it was Huawai then the US should just level sanctions against Huawai rather than arresting its executives on criminal charges.
It's interesting that this happened on the same day Trump and Jinping met, there is a possibility they both knew about this prior to the meeting. On Monday stock market goes up on "improving China relations", on Tuesday the Dow tanks 800 points on "no news". Chances are the sell-off was because some people learned about it on Tuesday.
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[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 299 ms ] threadI'm not saying that Huawei is innocent, I just agree with the downvoted comment that the situation seems ridiculous.
In most countries laws are created faster than citizens can learn them even if they would put a lot of effort into that. In many cases those who vote them haven't even read them in detail. There is no single person on the planet who knows all laws in all countries. Should we abandon the idea of the Internet?
It would be purely hypothetical pondering if not for GDPR which bring a lot of mess to countries outside EU and cut off some EU users from the content which they could otherwise consume.
Unless regulators get their stuff together reasonably quick, we may likely end up in some more encrypted and decentralized version of the Internet which makes governments less relevant. I don't mind.
I highly doubt that Huawei executives were unaware that this was against US policy and law; they just thought that the US would only punish the corporation and not the people involved, without realizing that the arm of US law extends to a whole web of countries that have extradition treaties with it.
See also the German VW executives who are very restricted in where they can travel to based on their crimes in the diesel emissions scandal.
For instance, Thailand sought extradition of those insulting their king abroad.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/29/thailand-bhumi...
They all have long prison sentences/death in their country, and light/no sentences in most of the rest of the world.
All countries have tried to go after people breaking their culturally sensitive thing abroad, with varying levels of success.
That doesn't make them morally equivalent. You can't defend 30 years in prison for being mean.
This sense of moral superiority or having a better judgement than others, is exactly the property that blinds individuals and entire cultures to the absurdity of their own morals.
Almost every culture at almost every point in history prevalently believes they have morals figured out and anything that came before them or from elsewhere is absurd.
In Thailand a lot of people jailed for Lèse-majesté get pardoned by the king. This king is new though so that might not continue.
This is why a number of VW corporate officers cannot travel to countries with extradition treaties with the US, due to diesel cheating scandal.
If you're outside America, you don't have a right not to be blown to pieces by a killer robot (aka "drone"). Why would you think that? They can blow you to pieces for any reason at any time no matter where you are.
That's a given, mate. The commentor made the ridiculous claim that he had a right not to be arrested in China for breaking Chinese laws. No individual has that right.
The passage I responded to was
> How sure can I be if my company is not breaking any Chinese laws? Would it by fine if I get arrested for breaking those when I'm on a trip to Asia?
The answer is that you cannot be sure. The chinese government has every ability to arrest you for crimes committed elsewhere. They have every ability to change their laws at any time to enable their arrest. No one will even blink if they abandoned their legal system entirely to arrest just you for nothing at all in particular. There is no 'rule' saying they can only arrest you for things done on their soil; or that arrests of a non-citizen must be just; or really anything.
This is true of America as well. Why wouldn't it be? We're speaking on the level of sovereign nations.
> If you're outside America, you don't have a right not to be blown to pieces by a killer robot (aka "drone"). Why would you think that? They can blow you to pieces for any reason at any time no matter where you are.
This is another topic entirely and completely non-germaine to the thread.
Whenever you get in the cross-hairs of any country and you travel abroad, there is a non-zero risk of you being extradited.
The unusual thing is that the Canada-US extradition treaty allows extradition on such a "political" offense, but that's probably mostly down to the US and Canada having the same position on Iran.
Countries with "incompatible" legal systems generally don't have extradition treaties, but if they do you typically have to be charged with something that's a serious crime in both countries.
What "authority" do you need to ask for a favor from a friendly ally? Canada also has active economic sanctions against Iran.
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
I'm sure you forgot. We all make mistakes.
I'm merely reminding. People forget lists of rules written in pages they don't frequently visit. It's no big deal. Fun fact, though: the guidelines say nothing about telling people to read the guidelines themselves ;)
For example, this article here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18476805
...is just dominated by people that didn't read to the end. The top complaint is treating the article as if it isn't facetious (it is.)
That does get very frustrating. I understand the premise of the rule, though.
I think the more important question is: if someone is talking out of their ass, is it worth continuing to talk to them? In RL, other factors may apply, but in a forum like this...?
Unless ofc you end up with an interesting response anyways ;) (note: did you read tfa does not constitute interesting unless your standards are disturbingly low). Imo the minimum is a good backhanded insult thrown in
Sarcasm is annoying, and prone to misinterpretation. That's not the fault of the reader who took the author at face value.
What if the us origin component was a plastic bezel, a screw or some peice of sheet metal in the chassis...
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-huawei-skycom/exclusive-h...
Canada arrested him, not the US.
If you mean, what is the authority for the US to ask Canada to do that, well, asking doesn't require any special authority; OTOH, the US does have an extradition treaty with Canada [0], and while trade sanctions violations don't appear to be an enumerated offense covered by the extradition treaty, sanctions violations tend to also involve false declarations and certain kinds of frauds, which are covered.
[0] https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites-ext-c...
And for the sake of humanity let's hope the US is never beholden to Chinese whims.
Regean had sovereign immunity, so he could not be personally tried.
That is a strange closed loop.
Some times the US later finds out that the arresting country’s courts found no authority or legality for their own country to arrest the person and wont continue with extradition. This happened in New Zealand.
So typically a bit more research is needed and they find a way to get it right in future cases.
Another thing the US does is send an FBI agent to merely observe the arrest, to ensure that it is later compatible with US courts as well. Its a lot of organizations to make happy but the US is essentially one of the only organizations with the resources and interest to bother.
It is an interesting outcome of the nation state concept.
https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites-ext-c...
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
You will also note that the poster of the question never came back to acknowledge the work people put into replying and explaining the situation. I believe that eduction wasn't the intent here.
Regarding "coming back", the poster may be in a different time zone or have an abnormal work / life schedule
Your explanation is flawed because it’s derived from how you think of the speaker with no good faith.
What she is alleged to have done would be a crime in Canada too so her nationality isn’t relevant.
It seems the only allegations are against Huawei, of which sh is just one of many board members, and there's a good chance she wasn't even involved with the deal the allegation is concerning.
That's not a fair comparison. If any law was broken, it was definitely not broken on US soil. It would be like US arresting people that it thinks committed murders in China.
> What she is alleged to have done would be a crime in Canada too so her nationality isn’t relevant.
I think it is. It's also relevant where the crime occured. e.g., lets say some small country decides that it's illegal to wear grey color pants. Then, can they morally arrest any person anywhere in the world that they think wore grey color pants at any point in the time at any place in the world?
IE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_Border_Declaration
There's all sorts of similar agreements/declarations/etc. We have a rather fluid border for the arrest and extradition of individuals.
The US calling Canada on the phone and asking them to arrest someone they want seems too.. easy? I imagine there's a limit where goodwill only gets you so far, and then some sort of compensation is expected. Maybe there's a lot of backdoor Gov2Gov money funneling or economic deals, but idk. This seems like stuff that is opaque to average citizens.
> All extradition treaties currently in force require foreign requests for extradition to be submitted through diplomatic channels, usually from the country's embassy in Washington to the Department of State. Many treaties also require that requests for provisional arrest be submitted through diplomatic channels, although some permit provisional arrest requests to be sent directly to the Department of Justice. The Department of State reviews foreign extradition demands to identify any potential foreign policy problems and to ensure that there is a treaty in force between the United States and the country making the request, that the crime or crimes are extraditable offenses, and that the supporting documents are properly certified in accordance with 18 U.S.C. § 3190. If the request is in proper order, an attorney in the State Department's Office of the Legal Adviser prepares a certificate attesting to the existence of the treaty, etc., and forwards it with the original request to the Office of International Affairs.
For the Canadian version, see https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/emla-eej/tocan-aucan.htm...:
"""
There are three key stages to the Canadian extradition process:
The Minister of Justice must determine whether to authorize the commencement of extradition proceedings in the Canadian courts by issuing an “Authority to Proceed” ; Where an Authority to Proceed has been issued, the Canadian courts must determine whether there is sufficient evidence to justify the person’s committal for extradition; and Where the person is committed for extradition, the Minister of Justice must personally decide whether to order the person’s surrender to the foreign state. A person sought for extradition may appeal their committal and seek judicial review of the Minister’s surrender order.
In all cases, the conduct for which extradition is sought must be considered criminal in both the requesting country and in Canada. This is known as “dual criminality”.
Central Authorities from outside Canada are encouraged to contact the IAG to determine what is required to make an extradition request to Canada, including the evidentiary requirements, and whether provisional arrest is appropriate in a given situation.
"""
To the second aspect of your question, Canada is under treaty obligation to cooperate with extradition requests issued by US courts for fugitive apprehension, and Canadian courts will rule on whether the extradition is consistent with Canadian law before transferring the suspect to US federal custody.
Welcome to the rule of law.
2. Canada has similar embargo laws on the books.
3. Canada has a multi-lateral extradition treaty with the US
4. The crime is considered serious with a maximum penalty (in the US) of up to 20 years in prison plus substantial monetary fines.
So she's accused of a serious crime in the US that's also recognized as a crime in Canada, and the countries have an extradition treaty.
However, it may not be salient. It's allegedly HP computer equipment - https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-huawei-skycom/exclusive-h...
This is surely about hardware.
If I’m wholesaling Cisco routers and they show up in Syria or Iran, and Cisco and I can prove we didn’t know how they got there , that still doesn’t make it okay.
If HP (A US company) sells to a middleman without knowing who the final customer is for embargoed goods then HP and its executives can be held legally responsible.
This is mostly based on mandatory training I had to go through while working for a US company. I am not a lawyer ;)
If embargoes were trivial to get around they'd be pointless. The intent of embargo laws are to as much as possible, within the full power of the US, prevent goods from getting to a certain country regardless of any other variable. Embargoes are pretty extreme actions, there are only a few targets for those in general and the embargo usually targets specific goods.
The crackdown on online poker was a striking example of this. To give cliff notes the US, heavily influenced by casino lobbyists, decided to ban online poker. Online poker sites were operating in foreign countries obeying all laws domestically applied to them. In spite of the fact that sites were operating within all laws that domestically applied to them, the US decided to act because they refused to overtly ban US players. In an extremely rapid action the US simultaneously confiscated the domains of these sites, and executed arrest warrants on many of the involved individuals including surreptitious raids and extraditions from places including South/Central America, and froze numerous bank accounts around the world including in places such as Ireland.
The US is powerful enough that its own desire is sufficient authority to enact any action. Guantanamo Bay is a great example. This is not a just a US property under US law. It is operated as a US territory but mostly independent of US legal authority. The Geneva Convention is disregarded as convenient. For instance the three prisoners that were reported as having committed suicide (which would result in condemnation in Islamic belief) were allegedly tortured to death at a secret facility in Guantanamo, known as 'Camp No' (as in, no it does not exist), detached from the main camp. [1]
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_No
Canada: 5'4 @110 lb kid in glasses with a pocket protector. Very smart. Has adoring crowd that claps.
US: the 6'1 220lb line backer built in the same school yard
Arrested Chinese exec: 4'10, 78lb daughter of a family from a different school somewhere over there. That school has lots of those like the US, US sometimes exchanges words with that school but they are somewhere over there.
Girls shows up in a schoolyard with Canada and the US. US tells Canada: "Give her to me. I have some business with her".
Remarkable that they (she?) went through all the effort to set up a HK front company, but then left the Huawei logo on their powerpoint decks
Like Capote for tax fraud.
If the whole company is suspected of breaking the embargo, why is just the CFO arrested? Was she just the one they could get?
Also, it seems weird that Huawei can sell their own products to Iran but not American products they own.
This seems likely. Any officer of the company might do in this circumstance. She might be the only one currently accessible in a country friendly to US extradition.
If the basis of extradition is fraud by a corporate officer (which seems to be one of the more likely offenses in a trade sanctions case actually covered by the extradition treaty, as sanctions violations themselves are not), then the question is how many corporate officers of Huawei are in Canada and exposed to extradition?
I'm guessing this is just a continuation of the trade war we've been having with china and we told the canadians to arrest the CFO to send a message to china. She was probably targeted because she was important enough to matter but not important enough to go to war over.
It'll be interesting how china responds. I doubt china would go after one of our execs but I wouldn't want to be a canadian executive in china.
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.
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.
(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.
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-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-03-13/now-ar...
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
In retrospect, that was foolish.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
https://www.rt.com/business/443354-iran-south-korea-currenci...
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.
> 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...
[1]http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-6643_en.htm
https://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/25/world/asia/china-us-busin...
This is one of the most interesting cases I've seen:
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-story-of-joseph-nacchio-...
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).
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.
"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."
https://twitter.com/crimeaday
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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-...
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-...
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.
Also, under Russian laws companies like Google or Facebook must keep Russian users' data in Russia; they are not complying.
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.
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.
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.
“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"?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/1...
lol
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.
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.
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
But seriously, China is already preventing foreigners from leaving the country. https://www.afr.com/news/world/asia/china-steps-up-and-widen...
Though there's a lot of realpolitik, it actually does matter what the laws say as well.
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18351568
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.
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.
Think about it.
How was it proven false?
How many foreign nationals own property in Vancouver? How many of those properties are unoccupied? I can't remember where I spotted reporting on those two questions, but I wouldn't be surprised if the city publishes real estate transaction data such that the number of foreign purchases can be gathered. I remember a very small portion reported.
https://www.thestar.com/vancouver/2018/06/24/in-one-of-west-...
From the financial post (https://business.financialpost.com/real-estate/perception-of...):
A study from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released Wednesday found that 68 per cent of Vancouver respondents, 48 per cent of Toronto respondents and 42 per cent of Montreal respondents believe foreign buyers are having "a lot of influence" on their markets and are driving up home prices.
The insight into perceptions around foreign buyers that 30,000 respondents in the three cities shared with the Crown Corporation between September and mid-October is in stark contrast with recent data from Statistics Canada showing foreign buyers only own 4.8 per cent of Vancouver properties and 3.4 per cent of homes in Toronto.
----
The truth is that we're house horny enough to not need any outside help to increase the price of real estate. According to Statistics Canada, 69.0% of households are owner (https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as-sa/99-014-x/99-0...). While anecdotal data can be comforting, the data doesn't support the thesis.
a) it's from 2011, that's 7 years ago. b) Just being house owners doesn't mean a lot. There are non-Canadians (neither PR nor Citizens) buying condo's/houses with 35+% downpayment. Our government allows that, which is kind of mind boggling. You'll see a lot of international students living in condo's that their parents have bought.
I know this is unrelated point, but also effing Airbnb has screwed up the market for renters/first time home buyers.
Whatever the exact number is, I don't think you can draw a conclusion just from that measure alone. The percentage of total properties owned by non-residents is less important than the percentage of recent sales that went to non-residents.
Some completely made up and simplified numbers to illustrate my point:
Let's say 10% of all properties in Vancouver have been sold on the market in the last 8 years, and 25% of those went to foreign buyers. That would only account for an increase in 2.5% of non-resident ownership. That by itself doesn't sound significant, but 25% of all sales going to buyers many of which are price insensitive is going to have a massive effect on prices.
To be fair, I think all Nordsrom's in Canada accept WePay now. WePay is accepted in Nordrsom's Ottawa as well
It's difficult to take housing issues in Vancouver seriously because paranoia nonsense like "all Chinese are money launderers" just wouldn't stop coming. As soon as a discussion happens, it gets swarmed by (dare I say it) bigots and immediately derailed.
> Meng isn't a stranger to issues with sanctions. In 2013, Reuters found that Meng served on the board of Skycom Tech, a company that offered to sell HP equipment to Iran in late 2010 with Huawei's apparent blessing -- 13 pages of the proposal were marked as "Huawei confidential." The deal reportedly never went through, but it could have landed at least Huawei and Skycom in trouble. It's unclear if the arrest has a connection to the 2010 sale or is based solely on separate allegations.
If a deal like that went through, that's a pretty intuitive and straightforward violation of sanctions.
"One can end up in jail by simply hiring nationals from sanctioned countries and then giving them access to documents pertaining to US military technology."
This doesn't just happen to any random employer or any random professor. It happens when you are working for the DoD and you do something you shouldn't. If you don't want to run afoul of such laws, be better informed or don't take government contracts.
Not true! Once a technology is deemed to fall under ITAR or EAR, the export regulations kick in. Doesn't matter if the technology belongs to the government, a large company, a startup, or a university lab. And for obvious reasons, sometimes people are not aware this fact.
I don't understand the last bit there about a "publicaton ban." So, in Canada, a suspect can request that some info of their arrest be withheld? I googled and came up with https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/victims-victimes/factshe..., but it doesn't make much sense to me since her name was published? So how would a publication ban protect her identity? I guess there could be others involved that she was protecting and not wanting the names released?
As stated on the wiki, likely because the publicity generated could affect the case. This case likely will get a lot of publicity.
Likely the cause celebre might not just be affecting court decisions but cause external effects like other clashes in society so best to keep it quiet to not risk random crises.
In 2013 she set up a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom Tech. That company (attempted to) purchase HP computers from the United States and resell them to Iran. The deal did not involve Huawei products, but many of the documents related to the deal were labeled "Huawei confidential" indicating they created the shell company to conceal their involvement.
She broke the law by attempting to do a straw purchase for the Iranian government of US manufactured restricted goods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_purchase
Canada has an extradition agreement with the United States, so the Canadian government arrested her on behalf of the US.
What does that statement mean?
I just think it's weird that the US law handles the resale case. Like they think they have authority over the whole world.
The US supposedly loves private property. But this transitive application of trade restrictions sounds like complete disrespect of private property. (And honestly even just any trade restrictions in general…)
What does that statement mean given that (1) the United States is most certainly able to, (2) the United States merely looks after its own interests, and (3) there is no (earthly at least) authority which can actually judge the United states's actions in this case.
Thus, what does it mean to say '<insert country here> must not'? By what standard?
This being HP computers, it may be possible that they might even have been made in China/HK themselves.
What if it was used second hand computers, aren't their rightful owners free to dispose them at their will without deferment to any trade restrictions sanctioned by the country of their origin.
By the standards of the United states of America, yes the government of the United States of America has every right to do so.
Take Arms. Lets say the US has an arms embargo with a country like Iran. You would agree that it definitely is a violation (and it would be of many international treaties) to purchase US arms as a Hong Kong (replace with whatever country) firm and then resell them to Iran. Now, with computers being the next front of warfare, computer tech is treated similar to arms.
The whole movie 'War Dogs' is about people doing this with Soviet Arms, repackaging them, and selling them to the US. It was illegal, hence they got locked up at the end
Yes, that's true. The US embargo policies undermine the prosperity of foreign and predominantly poor nations (including Cuba), the freedom of companies to engage in business with third partners, and the sovereignty of other nations, in this case, Canada.
It is a shame that the US can still bully businesses and countries around like this, and it is an even bigger shame that Canada complies.
To use an analogy, if the US is a cop the embargos are her taser and military intervention are her handgun. Outside of exigent circumstances she should prefer the former to the latter. While it's worthwhile to criticize unnecessary usages of the former, removing the less lethal option means plenty of bad actors get shot when getting tased would have resolved the threat.
EDIT: Above is the carrot. There are also sticks that can be brought to bear, like import tariffs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems
It seems like the US Government has a serious axe to grind with Huawei.
but seriously, just google ITAR violations and youll find a litany of other american companies that have been made to pay fines for violations and allowed to continue business as normal with no sanctions, no boycotts.
https://spacenews.com/37071us-satellite-component-maker-fine... https://www.strtrade.com/news-publications-ITAR-AECA-violati...
its just Huawei for some reason that sticks in the craw of DC, and has for months now starting with senators insisting they should be boycotted, to a defense procurement boycott that extends to DOD contractors, and eventually the evangelism of a boycott that extends to AT&T and others.
Im genuinely curious what caused it? because the trade violation just seems convenient.
Extraditing someone to the US for violating US sanctions against Iran aligns pretty well with Canada's interests right now.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Iran_relations
Going off on a tangent, but the hypocrisy around the Middle East is so brazen, it's embarrassing. I am by no means a fan of the Iranian regime. It's as rotten as all the autocraticies and theocraties in the region. However, to claim Iran is irredeemable for supporting Assad while at the same time inking arm deals and strategizing with Saudi Arabia is an insult to our intelligence.