SALT LAKE CITY — Sen. Mitt Romney signed on to a bipartisan bill that would prevent the Trump administration from allowing American companies to do business with a Chinese telecommunications giant that lawmakers say poses a threat to U.S. security.
Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., introduced a bill Tuesday that would prohibit the removal of Huawei Technologies from a Commerce Department blacklist without congressional approval. The bill would also allow Congress to nix any waivers granted to companies selling products to Huawei.
"We must make a concerted effort to confront the threat China poses to U.S. national security, intellectual property and technology,” Romney said in a statement. “Our bill will prohibit U.S.-based companies from doing business with Huawei until they no longer pose a national security threat.”
Cotton said the bill reinforces President Donald Trump's decision to put Huawei on a technology blacklist.
"Huawei isn’t a normal business partner for American companies, it’s a front for the Chinese Communist Party," he said in statement. "American companies shouldn’t be in the business of selling our enemies the tools they’ll use to spy on Americans."
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that progress toward a U.S.-China trade deal has stalled while the Trump administration determines how to address Beijing’s demands that it ease restrictions on Huawei.
During talks with China’s President Xi Jinping last month in Japan, Trump said the U.S. would allow some American companies to sell products to Huawei. But so far administration officials haven’t reached consensus on which semiconductor chips and other products could be sold to Huawei without triggering security concerns or giving the company a strategic edge, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Van Hollen said in a statement that the best way to address the national security threat from China’s telecommunications companies is to draw a clear line in the sand and stop retreating every time Beijing pushes back.
"By prohibiting American companies from doing business with Huawei, we finally sent an unequivocal message that we take this threat seriously and President Trump shouldn’t be able to trade away those legitimate security concerns,” he said.
In his first Senate floor speech last month, Romney called China not only an economic foe but a growing military threat that must be tamed by alliances with other free countries.
He said he supports the Trump administration's tariffs on Chinese goods, but also criticized the government's response to China as "ad hoc, short term or piecemeal."