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The Trump administration and members of Congress lobbied the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday to remove China’s three major telecommunications companies from the stock exchange.
The stock exchange on Monday evening canceled its initial plan, announced last week, to delist the companies from the list to comply with an administration decree aimed at halting American investments in companies linked to the Chinese military.
Monday’s sudden reversal of the exchange caused confusion and reflected the ongoing battles within the Trump administration over how tough the line to take against China during President Trump’s final days in power. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin lobbied for greater adaptation of Chinese companies, while Defense Ministry officials argued the companies in question should be delisted on national security grounds.
The Big Board said Monday night it halted plans to write off companies after consulting with the Treasury Department. The about-face came a week after the exchange announced it would stop trading in China Unicom, China Telecom and China Mobile shares by January 11 in response to an executive order from the Trump administration that barred Americans invest in companies related to the Chinese. military.
Speculation that the overthrow was facilitated by Mr. Mnuchin sparked a reaction from some Chinese hawks in Congress on Tuesday.
“The days of Wall Street and China profiting at the expense of American workers and industry must come to an end,” said Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said on twitter. He said such a move would be a “scandalous effort” to undermine President Trump’s executive order.
Business and Economy
The Defense Ministry also attacked the move, issuing a statement to Bloomberg News on Tuesday that keeping companies on the exchange strengthens them and “promotes intelligence-gathering activities” by the Chinese Communist Party. Shortly after the statement was released, the Pentagon retracted it. A Pentagon spokeswoman made no comment.
The Treasury Department had no comment on whether Mr. Mnuchin had encouraged the stock exchange to end write-offs, and on Tuesday, as he left on an international trip, Mr. Mnuchin wanted the stock exchange to go from forward with its plan to cut companies. . A senior administration official said Mr Mnuchin called Stacey Cunningham, chairman of the NYSE Group, on Tuesday to voice his objection to the decision not to deregister.
A spokesperson for the New York Stock Exchange did not comment on the call.
The scope of the presidential decree has been debated. According to a person familiar with the matter, the exchange withdrew its plan to delist Chinese companies after determining that the wording was ambiguous and it was not clear whether the companies should be removed.
If the Treasury Department clarifies that the order applies to those companies, the exchange will continue with delisting, the person said.
Another administration official said an interagency discussion was taking place on Tuesday evening on updating the ordinance to make it clear that it applied to Chinese telecommunications companies.
Monday’s stock exchange statement did not provide a reason for the decision, although it hinted at the ambiguity of the order and said the decision came “in light of further consultations with relevant regulatory authorities. “. The exchange said its regulator would continue to assess the order’s applicability to telecommunications companies.
The delisting would have had little practical impact on the companies, which also have shares listed in Hong Kong and are state-owned. Yet the demise of the US stock market had significant symbolic value for the deterioration of economic ties between China and the United States.
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