Wilbur Ross: We're exploring 'alternative remedies' for ZTE ban
Source: Politico
By ELI OKUN 05/14/2018 02:10 PM EDT Updated 05/14/2018 02:51 PM EDT
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Monday that the Trump administration is open to changing its ban on U.S. companies buying and selling products from Chinese phone-maker ZTE, a day after President Donald Trump hinted at a surprising reversal.
“ZTE did do some inappropriate things. They’ve admitted to that,” Ross said at a National Press Club event. “The question is: Are there alternative remedies to the one that we had originally put forward? And that’s the area we will be exploring very, very promptly.”
Ross’s Commerce Department levied a harsh penalty against the electronics company last month, imposing a seven-year ban on American companies selling or purchasing its products. The U.S. had reached an agreement with ZTE in March 2017 that included a $1.19 billion fine, but it added the new ban because it said the company broke the agreement by failing to punish top managers.
ZTE acknowledged in the agreement that it had violated sanctions on Iran and North Korea, but the new penalty seemed poised to destroy ZTE. The phone-maker announced last week that it had stopped “major operating activities,” and The New York Times reported that workers at a Shenzhen plant had almost nothing to do.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/14/wilbur-ross-zte-ban-584713
Wilbur Ross: ‘I don’t think the sky will fall’ with census citizenship question
By ELI OKUN 05/14/2018 02:40 PM EDT
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Monday defended the Trump administration’s decision to add a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 census, saying he didn't think the addition would mean the "sky will fall."
“It’s been asked every year on the American Community Survey in the exact same form that we’re planning to do in the census this year. Sixty-one million families have already been exposed to the question, and the sky has not fallen,” Ross said at a National Press Club event. “So I don’t think the sky will fall when we add it to the census itself in 2020.”
He rattled off several steps the department would take to ease the change for non-English speakers, including providing access to multilingual instructional material and call-center resources and working with community groups to explain the importance of participation.
“We’re also putting the citizenship question last so that someone who, for whatever reason, feels uncomfortable with that question, at least they can deal easily with the questions with which they are not uncomfortable,” Ross added.
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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/14/wilbur-ross-census-citizenship-question-585623
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