WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has imposed sweeping new sanctions on the International Criminal Court as part of its campaign to dismantle the tribunal over investigations into the United States and its allies, including Israel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions Friday, after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to South African jurist Navi Pillay, a former judge at the ICC and other international courts whose selection was condemned by Israel. President Trump has coveted that prize for himself.
“We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate against us,” Rubio said in a video address posted to social media. “The United States and the American people are not subject to the jurisdiction of this fake ICC.”
The sanctions cut the court off from U.S.-based financial services, technology companies and even using U.S. dollars. They set a six-month timeline for U.S. companies and individuals that have business with the court to wind that business down.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks at the Pnyx hill, where ancient Athenians held democratic assemblies, with the ancient Parthenon temple atop the Acropolis in the background, in Athens,Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026.
(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)
The ICC denounced the step as an attack on the rule of law and the foundations of international order, themes that Rubio had appeared to embrace only two days ago in a speech in front of the Acropolis in Athens.
“It is an attempt to obstruct the course of justice and to prevent the court from doing what it was created to do,” the court said in a statement. “It is an assault on the rule of law and on the very foundations of the international legal order which strikes at the simple principle that no one stands above the law.”
ICC President Tomoko Akane, a citizen of U.S. ally Japan, said the court would “continue to fully discharge its mandate, with independence and impartiality, acting only on the basis of the law and the evidence, for the sake of the countless victims of grave crimes.”
She also appealed to other ICC members for support. “This is not just about defending a single institution, but about safeguarding the international order grounded upon the rule of law.”
Rights groups also denounced the sanctions.
“This existential attack must fail,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, an Amnesty International senior director. “States must take concrete action to resist the imposition of these measures and actively protect the Court.”
A view of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, on August 22, 2026.
(Karolina Janik/NurPhoto via Associated Press)
The court’s host country of the Netherlands has been preparing for weeks for the move. One possible measure to mitigate sanctions is the EU “blocking statute,” which could be used to protect European court staff by preventing European companies from complying with the U.S. measures. Dutch Foreign Minister Tom Berendsen has called the blocking statute the “nuclear option” in countering possible sanctions, but said the Netherlands has been in talks with the European Commission to ensure that if it is necessary it can be quickly enacted.
In a joint statement, Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom expressed strong disagreement with the U.S. sanctions.
“We will continue to work together to support the court’s vital work, uphold the rules-based international system, and advance accountability,” the statement said.
“If put into effect, these sanctions will have a significant impact on the court’s work, its dedicated staff and their families. They work every day to bring those accused of the most serious international crimes to justice and to support their victims.”
Rubio said U.S. allies should join in the U.S. actions. “If they do not, the United States will continue its campaign to dismantle the ICC, piece by piece, until Americans are threatened no longer,” he said.
A number of countries have withdrawn from the court this year, including Venezuela and Chad. The South Pacific island nation of Naoero was the most recent to announce it would quit.
Lee and Quell write for the Associated Press. Quell reported from The Hague, Netherlands. AP writer Mike Corder contributed to this report from The Hague.
WASHINGTON — Since the 2024 election, Democratic congressional candidates have reached a consensus about how to broadly discuss the border — make it secure — but they still lack a cohesive message about ICE.
Some advocate abolishing the agency, while others offer visions for how to rein it in and reform it.
Meanwhile, for Republicans, President Trump’s immigration policies have offered a win on one issue (the border) while creating another issue that many voters find troubling (violence during raids).
Some battleground Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump and have shifted from talking about mass deportations to emphasizing deporting criminals.
Most voters don’t care more about immigration than the cost of living. But it remains an important issue, and for both Republicans and Democrats, the balance in messaging about immigration is delicate, as about half of Americans see the administration’s tactics against immigrants as too aggressive.
As the Nov. 3 midterms approach, Democratic candidates in various states including Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey have said Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished. In Michigan, progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has said as much — and taken aim at fellow party members.
“The idea that somehow we can’t say ‘abolish ICE’ because we’re so afraid of what they’re going to say, when we’ve seen ICE terrorize people in our streets,” he said before Michigan’s Senate primary in July. “To me, it is exactly the kind of cowardice that we don’t need from Democrats.”
The Democratic dilemma was crystallized last month when Democratic National Committee members approved dueling messages — one to abolish ICE, the other to reform it.
Among those in the reform camp is Randy Villegas, the political science professor running against Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in California’s Central Valley.
Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), presiding over a congressional subcommittee meeting in Washington on March 6, is seeking reelection in California’s 22nd District.
(Allison Robbert / Ap Photo/allison Robbert)
Villegas is in favor of a pathway to citizenship for longtime immigrants as well as a secure border. He’s called for ending the use of for-profit detention facilities and prosecuting ICE agents who engage in illegal conduct.
It’s a personal issue too. Villegas is the son of immigrants from Mexico, and, according to a 2021 NPR story, his brother is a DACA recipient, granted protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He said the constituents of the mostly rural 22nd District deserve a representative who understands the effects of the broken immigration system; he recalls his mother being unable to visit her sister when she was dying of cancer.
“Kern County was ground zero for these ICE raids last year. What did Valadao do or say about it? Absolutely nothing. This is somebody who likes to pretend they’re a moderate on immigration. He voted to triple ICE’s budget,” Villegas said in an interview, noting that he organized a local workshop with immigration attorneys.
After the raids, led by Customs and Border Protection agents who were reported to have gone “rogue” weeks before President Biden left office, Valadao released a statement saying he had spoken to agency officials and urged them to target “criminals rather than those responsible for producing our nation’s food supply.”
Valadao, a dairy farmer and the son of immigrants from the Azores islands of Portugal, says on his campaign website that he supports a “reasonable and responsible” pathway to citizenship, a guest worker program that could stabilize the agricultural workforce and a focus on removing immigrants who have committed serious crimes.
Last year, he sponsored the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill that would create a new temporary legal status for immigrants who meet certain requirements and pass a criminal background check.
Valadao declined an interview request but said in a statement that “our immigration system is broken after decades of inaction, and it’s critical that we restore law and order while recognizing the contributions of people who have lived and worked peacefully in our communities for years.”
In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico frequently has said that the southern border should be treated “like our front porch,” with a welcome mat and a lock on the door.
Talarico says immigration enforcement is necessary but that resources should be refocused to target cartels, gang members and human traffickers. As for ICE, he said the government should “tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that is actually going to focus on public safety.”
Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, has embraced President Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
(Tony Gutierrez / Ap Photo/tony Gutierrez)
Centrist Democratic strategists said Talarico’s messaging strikes the right tone for swing voters.
During the Biden administration, voters lost trust with Democrats on immigration and border security, said Sarah Pierce, a former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official who leads immigration work at the center-left think tank Third Way. That needs to stay top of mind for Democratic candidates, she said.
“Americans don’t trust that Democrats are even willing to enforce immigration laws, so obviously there’s a lot of pressure on the party to rectify that,” Pierce said. “At the same time, this is the most anti-immigrant administration we’ve had in history.”
Talarico’s opponent, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, touts Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and has made border security a key part of his campaign.
Paxton also believes states should work with the federal government on immigration enforcement. This year, his office conducted raids in Houston and transferred 50 immigrants to ICE custody.
James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, has called for reforming Immigration and Customs Enforcement but unlike some Democratic candidates, he has not called for abolishing the agency.
(Danielle Villasana / Getty Images)
Matt Terrill, a Republican strategist who was chief of staff for then-Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said Republican candidates need Trump to turn out the GOP base so they retain control of Congress.
Some Republican candidates are conveying a more nuanced message, but it might not matter to voters who already feel betrayed by Trump. That’s the assessment of Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University who studies Republican and Homeland Security politics.
“A lot of Republican candidates are struggling to figure out a message on what had been a great political strength that has turned into a major liability,” Dallek said. “Different Republicans are giving different answers to try to appeal to the Latino vote, maybe to independents, to voters who might typically vote Republican and support closed borders, but think that ICE has gone too far.”
Many Republican candidates aren’t avoiding immigration. A Third Way analysis of last month’s spending on immigration-related ads in competitive House and Senate races found that Republicans had spent more than $50 million — five times more than Democrats.
At issue, however, is the messaging. Earlier this year, White House officials and House Republican leaders reportedly told their members to avoid talking about “mass deportations” and talk up removing criminals.
Rep. Gabe Evans, who is running for reelection in Colorado, described the distinction as “gangbangers, not grandmas.”
At the Republican National Convention in 2024, Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas) denounced “open borders” before a crowd waving signs reading “mass deportation now!”
As the Trump administration’s enforcement campaign took shape, however, she signed a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson calling on ICE to focus its resources on arresting immigrants with criminal records, and in March she intervened after local high school mariachi performers were detained.
This month, De La Cruz released a campaign ad, featuring the wife of a DACA recipient who was detained this year by ICE. The wife said that she had voted for Democrats before, “but Monica puts people over politics.”
A representative for De La Cruz did not respond to requests for comment.
Her opponent, Tejano musician Bobby Pulido, said he doesn’t like talking in absolute terms like abolishing ICE. But without the historic funding approved by Republicans this year, the agency would have been prevented from continuing what he sees as bad policy on humanitarian and economic levels.
But Pulido also says that the Biden administration waited too long to impose border restrictions.
“It feels like it went from ‘let ‘em all in’ to ‘kick ‘em all out,’” he said in an interview. “I don’t think that either one is good. We need immigrants, but everybody always says do it the legal way. We have to actually legislate pathways for that to happen.”
One Republican has directly broken with Trump in her bid for reelection. In a campaign ad released Sept. 17, Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, standing in front of the White House, speaks directly to the president. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she said.
Polling shows that many in that district, where Latinos make up three-quarters of registered voters and more than half were born outside the U.S., now think Trump’s immigration crackdown has gone too far. Polls also show Salazar is deadlocked with her opponent, Eliott Rodriguez, a fellow Cuban American and newscaster who fired back at her for voting in favor of Trump’s policies.
Harvey Weinstein’s winding legal saga took a new turn this week, one that reaffirmed that the former Hollywood kingmaker — whose alleged history of sexual assault and abuse sparked the cross-industry #MeToo reckoning — will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
Weinstein, 74, was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 years in prison for a felony sex crime tied to allegations from former “Project Runway” production assistant Miriam “Mimi” Haley. After a retrial last year, a majority-female jury found the disgraced Hollywood mogul and co-founder of the defunct Weinstein Co. guilty of sexually assaulting Haley in 2006 at his New York apartment.
Haley described the lasting and “devastating” effects of Weinstein’s assault as she addressed the court during Wednesday’s sentencing.
“Making the decision to speak up will have me looking over my shoulder for years to come,” she said. “It’s a life sentence for me.”
Weinstein said he has “remorse for Miriam Haley’s pain,” but maintained that he’s innocent.
The New York sentencing this week was not the first time Weinstein received a lengthy prison sentence for sex crimes. Since the damning sexual assault and harassment allegations against Weinstein first entered the legal spotlight in 2017, the Oscar-winning producer has faced convictions for rape and sexual assault over the course of trials — and retrials — from 2020 to 2025.
Weinstein has already served more than six years in New York, leaving him with about nine years left on that sentence. A pending resentencing in California — he was sentenced to more than a decade for a 2013 rape — could keep the mogul behind bars for life, the Associated Press reported.
Here’s a look back on Weinstein’s previous convictions and the prison sentences that followed.
March 2020: 23-year prison sentence in New York
Weinstein was first sentenced for his sex crimes against women in New York almost three years after the #MeToo movement upended his career as a prolific movie producer.
The mogul’s 2020 sexual assault trial, the first in a handful that would follow in the coming years, ended in February 2020 with a jury delivering a mixed verdict. The jury convicted Weinstein of committing a criminal sexual act and third-degree rape based on accusations from Haley and former actor Jessica Mann, respectively. The jury acquitted him on the most serious charges, including two counts of predatory sexual assault.
Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse for jury deliberations in his rape trial, Monday, Feb. 24, 2020, in New York.
(Seth Wenig / Associated Press)
A month later, New York Supreme Court Judge James Burke announced that Weinstein would carry out a 23-year prison sentence for his crimes. He was ordered to serve 20 years for his 2006 attack against Haley in his Manhattan apartment. The judge added three years to Weinstein’s sentence for raping Mann in a Manhattan hotel in 2013. Weinstein was to serve those sentences consecutively.
At the time, the Miramax co-founder denied all wrongdoing and planned to appeal. Those efforts come into play in 2024.
February 2023: 16 years in California
Weinstein, a movie titan who once dominated Hollywood and produced some of the modern film industry’s most defining titles, including “Pulp Fiction” and the divisive Oscar best picture winner “Shakespeare in Love,” was tried in his stamping grounds in October 2022. He was prosecuted for allegations that he raped and attacked four women in Beverly Hills hotel rooms between 2004 and 2013. Before the trial, Weinstein was indicted on 11 counts of rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual battery in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills. He denied all wrongdoing.
The acrimonious trial, which stretched more than a month, ended in December 2022 with a jury convicting Weinstein of forcible rape, forcible oral copulation and sexual penetration by a foreign object. The jury acquitted Weinstein of the sexual battery of a massage therapist and failed to reach verdicts on counts involving two other women. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench declared a mistrial on the charges that left the jury deadlocked.
Weinstein’s conviction hinged on an account from an Italian model and actor identified in court as Jane Doe 1. She said the producer barged into her hotel room in Beverly Hills, where she was staying while attending a film festival, to assault her. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison in February 2023.
Harvey Weinstein appears in court at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on Oct. 4, 2022, in Los Angeles.
(Pool / Getty Images)
“There is no prison sentence long enough to erase the damage,” Doe said during the sentencing. “He deserves to experience the same shame, humiliation and fear as I did.”
Lench ruled at the time that Weinstein cannot serve his New York and Los Angeles sentences concurrently. His attorney said the producer would return to New York to carry out the remainder of that sentence before going to prison in California.
Earlier this year, a three-panel judge from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal unanimously agreed to deny Weinstein’s efforts to appeal the Los Angeles conviction. The Los Angeles trial judge was also ordered to resentence the mogul.
“This is not the end of the appellate process,” Juda Engelmayer, Weinstein’s publicist, said in June. “We intend to seek review in the California Supreme Court because we continue to believe significant legal errors affected the proceedings and warrant further review.”
Weinstein is awaiting resentencing for this case.
April 2024 to now: New York retrial leads to an updated prison sentence
In a dramatic reversal of the landmark #MeToo case, a state appeals court found that the judge who presided over Weinstein’s 2020 trial prejudiced his case by allowing four women who said Weinstein had assaulted them to serve as witnesses, even though their allegations were not part of the case. The appeals court also ruled the judge made a mistake in ruling prosecutors could cross-examine Weinstein about uncharged and decades-old allegations if he decided to testify.
What ensued was a retrial in 2025 that exceeded a month and featured emotional testimony from former accusers Haley and Mann, and model Kaja Sokola, who did not testify against the mogul in the 2020 trial.
The fallen Hollywood boss was retried on the allegations that led to his original rape and criminal sex act convictions. He was also tried on a new sexual assault charge stemming from Sokola’s allegation that he forced oral sex on her in 2006 when she was 19. Weinstein pleaded not guilty and his defense maintained the alleged sexual encounters were consensual. He did not take the stand, similar to his first trial in New York and his rape trial in Los Angeles.
Before Weinstein was convicted in June 2025 of forcing oral sex on Haley, he declared “it’s just not fair.”
“My life is on the line, and you know what? It’s not fair,” he said at the time. “It’s time, it’s time, it’s time, it’s time to say this trial is over.”
Time, it appears, is of the utmost importance for Weinstein, considering his renewed prison sentences in New York and an incoming sentence in California. Weinstein spoke at length with the Hollywood Reporter in March about carrying out his sentence and the possibility of dying behind bars. The former executive was jailed at the notorious Riker’s Island jail complex in New York at the time of the interview.
“It scares the s— out of me. Cold and heartless,” he told THR. “It’s incredible to have the life that I had and the things that I did for society and not have the leniency to deal with me in a kinder way. Whatever they think I did bad in my life, I didn’t get the death penalty.
Americans have demonized us as criminals, buffoons, lechers, invaders, criminals and job stealers since the fall of the Alamo. Latino culture typecasts hombres as eternal machos always a few drinks away from brawling or bawling. Educators view us as underachievers. The political class long stereotyped Latino men as a sleeping giant who could change the country, if only we showed up to vote with the same enthusiasm as attending a Raiders game or lining up for a sneaker drop.
The blame game continues. A study released this month by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute basically paints Latino men as little better than MAGA minions, trumpeting a gender gap on standing up to this administration’s deportation deluge, defending democracy and “fighting the Trump agenda.” To the media and to outraged internet commentators, it didn’t matter that two-thirds of Latino men had responded that each of those three issues was “very important” or “somewhat important.”
We just aren’t anti-Trump enough, which marks us as alien to the president’s critics. The UCLA paper’s cover page even features a red man and a blue woman conversing in what look like Aztec speaking glyphs — as if the sexes can’t understand each other and probably never will.
To explain the Latina-Latino political chasm, UCLA offers hypotheses straight out of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.” The women supposedly work more in caretaker jobs like teaching and healthcare, softening their views toward the least of us. The men are in blue-collar sectors with a Darwinian outlook. But it doesn’t take a fancy academic paper to come to that conclusion — all you need to do is, you know, talk to Latino men.
When Trump descended that damned escalator in 2015 to announce his first presidential run by sliming Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, I knew that this racist excuse for a leader — the most anti-Latino politician in our nation’s history — would nevertheless appeal to many Latino men.
The reasons were evident: Trump’s fame. His strongman persona. His riches. His default setting of, as we Mexicans say, me vale madre — I don’t give a damn what people think. Yet three successive Democratic presidential campaigns willfully ignored these flashing sirens, instead insisting that Green New Deals and diversity, equity and inclusion programs would appeal to working-class Latino men.
Pundits thought we were still motivated by the radical politics of the Chicano movement, as previous generations were. What they didn’t realize was that assimilation had transformed Latino men into the modern equivalent of President Nixon’s silent majority.
A “Latino Americans for Trump” office in Reading, Pa., during the 2024 elections.
(Joe Lamberti / Associated Press)
I’ve always thought Latino male Trumpers were deluded — but I’ve always understood where they’re coming from. They’re believers in rancho libertarianism, my neologism for the individualistic politics exemplified by the Mexican men who raised me and who I grew up with.
Rancho libertarians, like their Scotch-Irish cousins from another mother, are forever skeptical of government, respect insurgents who want to take on the establishment, love their people and subscribe to a bootstraps approach to life. Not as praiseworthy is a tendency to dislike being told what to do, and in proving a point, to not only cut off their nose to spite their face but to lop off their heads as well.
No wonder so many Latino men went for Trump. To quote another Mexican saying, por eso estamos como estamos. That’s why we’re the way we are.
And look at what it’s earned us.
MAGA has been a miasma on this land, but especially for the blue-collar Latinos whom Trump increasingly courted with each election cycle. Immigration agents have arrested U.S.-born Trump supporters and thrown their friends and family members into squalid detention centers to await certain deportation. Diesel and gas prices are outrageously high, after Trump started a war with Iran that seems to have no end.
Nothing has degraded more for Latino men, however, than the simple pleasures of life.
When my dad and my brother had a pool party for some cousins and their children last month at our Anaheim home — no more than 15 people — the cost of carne asada, chicken, chorizo and tortillas from a local carnicería was more than $200. That side of the family never supported Trump while not exactly being wokosos, either. As Spotify blasted Antonio Aguilar and Banda El Recodo, they complained about the economy and the Republicans who have rubber-stamped the Trump agenda, when we should have been talking about the Dodgers and vacations back to our ancestral Mexico state of Zacatecas.
If my Arellano cousins are ready to stick it to Trump on election day, so should the Latino men who supported him two years ago.
In 2024, Latinos were the pivotal vote that delivered swing states to Trump. In this year’s midterms, Latino men are the swing vote within that constituency, from congressional races once considered safely red in Texas and Florida to local elections across the country. It’s gotten so dire for Republicans that Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar put out a television ad warning Trump that “the same Hispanics who brought you to the White House … feel betrayed today.”
Honor remains big among rancho libertarians, and no politician has insulted the Latino way of life more than Trump. Helping to flip the House and Senate to the Democrats wouldn’t end his influence, but it sure would help. Plus, it would be a perfect rebuke to a pendejo who fooled too many good Latino men.
American society, whether the left or the right wing, will never fully accept us. We’ll always be thought of as too conservative, too dumb, too reactionary, too violent by too many.
Well, if we’re going to be loathed, we might as well stand on the right side of history. It’s time for Latino men to stand up and hit Trump with another Mexican saying:
Chinese technology giant Huawei is facing a landmark criminal trial in the United States amid Washington’s long-running tech rivalry with Beijing.
The trial began in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on September 9, with US prosecutors portraying Huawei as a criminal enterprise that spent two decades stealing technology from US companies, deceiving banks and circumventing sanctions on Iran.
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Huawei has pleaded not guilty and says the US government is attempting to turn ordinary business disputes and the actions of individual employees into evidence of a company-wide conspiracy.
The trial is expected to last about three months and overlaps with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s September 23-25 visit to Washington, where trade, artificial intelligence, tariffs and access to critical technologies are likely to be on the agenda.
Here is what you need to know:
What are the allegations against Huawei?
US prosecutors have accused the company of racketeering, money laundering, bank and wire fraud, sanctions violations, obstruction and conspiring to steal trade secrets from five US technology companies.
Prosecutors say the alleged wrongdoing stretched from about 1999 to 2020.
“Theft, lies, cover-up,” Justice Department lawyer Taylor Stout said in his opening remarks.
Prosecutors allege Huawei stole technology, including internet-router source code from Cisco and a robotic arm used by T-Mobile to test phones.
They also accuse Huawei of concealing the nature of its operations in Iran to move US dollars through the financial system despite US sanctions.
The government also alleges that Huawei supplied equipment that could help Iranian authorities monitor protesters during demonstrations in 2009.
How has Huawei responded?
Huawei, a major manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, denies any wrongdoing.
The tech giant’s lawyer Brian Heberlig told jurors the case was about “competition, not conspiracy. Innovation, not theft. Ordinary business dealings, not criminal conduct.”
Heberlig accused prosecutors of “cherry-picking isolated events” to construct a conspiracy that did not exist. Huawei’s defence says some incidents involved individual employees whose actions were dealt with internally, rather than reflecting company policy.
He told jurors that prosecutors will describe routine activities by global tech companies “but will twist those ordinary activities to try to make them look criminal”.
Huawei separately described the broader prosecution as an attempt to undermine its competitiveness, saying the US government’s “overarching narrative is demonstrably false” and that it had “the utmost respect for intellectual property”.
The case originated during Donald Trump’s first presidency. His administration placed Huawei on a US trade blacklist in 2019 and pushed allies to exclude the company from 5G networks, arguing its equipment could present national security and espionage risks.
Huawei has repeatedly denied that its technology is used for spying.
What has China’s response been?
Beijing has strongly criticised the prosecution, which has come weeks ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to the US.
On Thursday, a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said “the Chinese government firmly opposes the US side’s suppression and containment of Chinese enterprises”, when asked about the case and the American prosecutor’s “criminal enterprise” description.
China “firmly supports Chinese enterprises in safeguarding their legitimate rights and interests”, the spokesperson said at a regular news conference.
What is Huawei, and has the tech giant faced investigations before?
Huawei is one of the world’s largest telecommunications equipment manufacturers. It also produces smartphones and has become increasingly important to China’s semiconductor and AI industries.
Its activities have drawn scrutiny well beyond the current US trial.
Belgian prosecutors launched an investigation in 2025 into suspected bribery involving the European Parliament allegedly for Huawei’s benefit.
The European Parliament subsequently suspended access for Huawei lobbyists. Huawei said it had “zero-tolerance” for corruption and would cooperate with authorities.
Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou made worldwide headlines in 2018 when she was arrested on a US warrant after landing in Vancouver, straining both US-China and China-Canada relations.
The warrant was filed after a sealed indictment accused her and the company of bank fraud for misleading HSBC and other banks about Huawei’s business in Iran.
She returned to China in 2021 under a deferred prosecution agreement, and the charges against her were later dismissed.
Admissions Meng made as part of that agreement can, however, be presented as evidence in Huawei’s current trial after a US judge ruled them admissible in June.
They are legally separate but form part of a much wider economic and technological competition between Washington and Beijing.
Huawei became one of the most prominent targets of US restrictions during Trump’s first term.
Since then, the rivalry has expanded from telecommunications and 5G into semiconductors and AI, with Washington restricting China’s access to advanced US chips and chipmaking technology.
Last week, Dario Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, warned that a “Chinese lead in AI would pose grave danger for the US and the world” and urged Washington to maintain restrictions on cutting-edge AI tech. He also called for action against alleged “distillation” of US models by Chinese AI laboratories.
China’s Foreign Ministry on September 14 accused the US tech giant of “fearmongering”.
“Fomenting various threats, engaging in confrontation and malicious competition will only disrupt the process of global governance of artificial intelligence and is not in the interests of any party,” said ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun.
The state-backed Global Times newspaper went further, describing Amodei’s proposal as a “Cold War playbook” whose real purpose was to curb Chinese AI development and preserve US technological dominance.
China and the US were engaged in a tit-for-tat tariff war at the beginning of Trump’s presidency in 2025. The trade war ended in a truce, but the world’s two largest economies have failed to strike a trade deal.
Beijing, meanwhile, has used its dominance of critical minerals as leverage and accelerated efforts to build domestic alternatives to American technology.
Currently, China controls most of the world’s rare earth minerals, including metals that are necessary for the manufacture of many technological items, from smartphones to fighter jets. The world’s second-largest economy has 60 percent of these minerals and processes 90 percent of the world’s supply.
In October, Beijing announced plans to require foreign companies to obtain permission to export Chinese rare earth equipment or material.
This meant companies anywhere in the world would need a licence to export rare earth magnets and certain semiconductor materials that contain even trace amounts of minerals sourced from China or produced using Chinese technology.
China’s Ministry of Commerce said its export controls on rare earths, which Trump had labelled “surprising” and “very hostile”, were introduced in response to a series of US measures.
