A ZTE office building is pictured in Shanghai on May 3. President Donald Trump had previously tweeted that he wanted to help the Chinese company. | Getty Senate rejects Trump’s rescue of Chinese firm ZTE

The Senate voted Monday to reimpose the U.S. ban on Chinese telecom giant ZTE, in a rebuke to President Donald Trump and his efforts to keep the company in business.

The provision targeting ZTE was part of the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass defense spending bill that cleared the Senate by a vote of 85-10. It must now be reconciled with the House version of the measure, which takes a narrower approach to ZTE.


The vote raises the stakes in Congress' brewing confrontation with Trump over the Chinese company, which lawmakers of both parties consider a national security threat to U.S. networks.

In a sign of the broad backing for the effort, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Marco Rubio of Florida as well as Democrats like Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts pushed for the ZTE ban to be included in the defense bill.

The White House has been scrambling to avert a showdown on the issue, dispatching Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to Capitol Hill last week and warning that any congressional action on ZTE should respect “the separation of powers.”

Trump will meet Wednesday with some Republicans on ZTE, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told POLITICO, although he didn’t say how many lawmakers would attend and whether the group would include any Democrats.

“I think the president wants to weigh in, and we want to listen to what he has to say,” Cornyn said, adding that “obviously there’s conflict" between the administration and Congress on the issue.

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The Commerce Department initially imposed a seven-year ban in April on American companies doing business with ZTE, saying the Chinese telecom violated a 2017 agreement by conducting illegal sales to North Korea and Iran. But ZTE soon became a pawn in Trump's trade negotiations with China.

The company is the fourth-largest vendor of mobile phones in the U.S. but depends on U.S. chipmakers to provide many of the electronic components — and warned it would not be able to survive being shut out of the American market.

Trump tweeted in May that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping were working on a way to get ZTE "back into business, fast," adding, "Too many jobs in China lost." The president said he'd instructed the Commerce Department to figure out a way to do it.

A subsequent deal announced by the agency would allow the Chinese company to operate in the U.S. if it pays a $1 billion fine, changes its management and embeds a compliance team.

That reversal alarmed lawmakers who have warned for years that China could harness equipment sold by ZTE and another homegrown telecom giant, Huawei, to steal data, eavesdrop on conversations or even carry out cyberattacks in the U.S.

The Senate’s ZTE provision would force Trump to certify that Chinese telecoms have not violated U.S. law for a full year and are cooperating with U.S. investigators before any lifting of civil penalties. It would also prevent the U.S. government from purchasing or subsidizing equipment from ZTE and Huawei.

Despite Monday’s overwhelming Senate passage, the ZTE ban could still be stripped from the defense bill or modified during the conference process between the Senate and House, which did not push back as aggressively in its own version of the legislation. House lawmakers did include a provision that would bar ZTE and Huawei from entering into U.S. government contracts.

The White House has not said whether Trump would veto the legislation if it includes the ZTE reversal. To beat a veto, Congress would need two-thirds majorities in both chambers, which is less certain in the House where the president has many GOP allies. Vulnerable House Republicans may also be reluctant to cross Trump with the 2018 midterms on the horizon.

Senate Democrats warned Republicans not to water down language on ZTE in their negotiations with the administration.

“I hope our Republican colleagues will let the president know that they’re going to remain firm on this,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), adding that the White House appears to be “putting on a full court press” to lobby lawmakers.

“They cannot allow ZTE off the hook the way the administration’s let them off the hook," he said.

Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.), a frequent ally of Trump, unsuccessfully sought to strip the provision out of the defense bill last week and still wants to target it through the conference process.

He said the U.S. needs to be competitive with the rest of the world, arguing, “This cannot happen if we tie the hands of our commander in chief during critical trade negotiations.”

