The U.S. Senate has taken a revolutionary step today. It passed a $716 billion defense policy bill on Monday which backs President Trump's call for a bigger, stronger military force. Apart from this, the bill has also nullified Trump's attempt to reopen the U.S. facilities of Chinese Telecom company: ZTE, with further effect.
According to Reuters, the Republican-led Senate voted 85-10 for the annual National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA. Generally, NDAA is the authorizing body which gives green signal to the spendings done by and for the U.S. military forces. In reality, it also acts as the driving force for a range of policy matters. In this context, NDAA has acted as the force to impose a block to all the U.S. companies which are dealing with ZTE, repealing Trump's earlier deal with the Chinese telecom giant.
South China Morning Post suggested that in a revolutionary step, which has hardly been observed before in terms of earlier records, the Republican-controlled Senate earlier included an amendment which would abolish the agreement made by Trump administration to allow ZTE to resume business and transactions with all its U.S. based suppliers and carriers. That provision has not been included in the latest House version of the NDAA.
Also, there are further steps left to turn the bill into a law. At first, it must be reconciled with one already passed by the House of Representatives. After that, it must be passed by both the chambers and sent for the final signature to President Trump for making it into a full-fledged law. This means that there is still an opportunity left for Trump to bypass the ZTE ban and thereby, turn his deal on as it was.
It should be noted in this context that, Democrats, as well as Republicans, were concerned about the national security of the United States after ZTE broke an agreement to discipline executives who had conspired to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran and North Korea. This incident led the U.S. government to ban ZTE from doing any business in the country.
However, it is still left to see what steps Trump administration takes to disrupt the ban against the Chinese telecommunication giant, as President Trump green signaled the deal with ZTE even afterward that incident. Democrats Chuck Schumer and Chris Van Hollen and Republicans Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio took the Senate vote positively and given an affirmative joint statement on this.
