Soros offers rare praise for Trump’s handling of Huawei in trade war

George SorosJoshua Roberts | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesBillionaire liberal financier George Soros offered some rare praise of Donald Trump’s policies in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Tuesday, but said he’s worried the president will undermine his own strategy.Soros called Trump’s policy on China, “coherent and genuinely bipartisan” as well as “the greatest — and perhaps only — foreign policy accomplishment of the Trump administration.”Specifically, Soros said the Trump administration was right to put Huawei on the Commerce Department’s “entity list” as a national security threat, which prevents U.S. companies from engaging in business with the firm.In the op-ed, Soros called China “a dangerous rival in artificial intelligence and machine learning” but said its ability to compete in the 5G market is seriously hampered by Huawei’s dependence on U.S. companies.”As long as Huawei remains on the entity list, it will lack crucial technology and be seriously weakened,” Soros wrote.But Soros said he worries Trump could remove Huawei from the entity list as a concession to China during trade talks. Soros said he believes Trump will want to arrange such talks in the lead-up to the 2020 election. While amendments have been introduced in the House and Senate to prevent Trump from removing Huawei from the list without congressional consent, Trump has sought to block that restriction, Soros wrote.


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