*By Justin Chermol*
The newly appointed vice chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Tex.), said he is "absolutely" concerned that Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei poses a threat to national security in an interview on Cheddar Tuesday.
"I do have that concern," Castro told Cheddar's J.D. Durkin. He noted that he helped push a bipartisan amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act last year to prevent government grants or loans being used to pay for Huawei services.
The Department of Justice unsealed two separate indictments on Monday against the company and its CFO Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in December. The cases claim the company and its leaders attempted to steal trade secrets from rival T-Mobile, promised bonuses to employees in exchange for intel on competitors, and sought to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran.
"With China, our overarching strategy has to be to respect them when they compete, but also to stop them when they cheat," he said.
Castro is particularly disturbed by prospect of Huawei lifting T-Mobile's technology for its own gain.
"What you see with China is the outright theft of trade secrets and technology and then taking that technology, in this case from T-Mobile, and using it for the benefit of Chinese companies without ever doing any of the innovation or the hard work ー or spending the money in terms of research or development to understand it themselves," he said.
The indictments may coincide with trade talks between the U.S. and Chinese officials, but Castro said that the meetings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday are unrelated to the charges leveled against Huawei.
"We should be able to separate out some sort of cheating or malfeasance from what we do in terms of talking about trade," he said.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/rep-joaquin-castro-talks-mueller-probe-huawei-charges-and-more).
NASA and SpaceX have chosen May 27 for resuming astronaut launches from the U.S. after nine years. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced the launch date Friday.
Democratic Congressmen Tim Ryan of Ohio and Ro Khanna of California introduced legislation this week that would pay all qualifying Americans aged 16 or older $2,000 every month.
In an interview on Cheddar’s Closing Bell, the California Republican pointed to China as a major contributor to the woes the world has experienced during the outbreak.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill, along with a bipartisan Congressional delegation from both New Jersey and New York, is calling on the federal government to increase coronavirus aid to the hardest hit areas of the country due to the pandemic.
Danielle Allen, director of the center, told Cheddar that ending quarantine will require a robust social effort involving potentially thousands of workers and brand new technology solutions.
Stocks are rising at the opening of trading on Wall Street Friday as investors rallied around signs that more governments are planning phased re-openings of their economies.
President Donald Trump gave governors a road map Thursday for recovering from the economic pain of the coronavirus pandemic, laying out “a phased and deliberate approach” to restoring normal activity in places that have strong testing and are seeing a decrease in COVID-19 cases.
Seven Midwestern governors announced Thursday that they will coordinate on reopening their state economies, after similar pacts were made earlier this week in the Northeast and on the West Coast.
Stock indexes ended a wobbly day with modest gains Thursday, while the biggest increases went to Amazon, Netflix and other companies poised to do the best during the coronavirus crunch.
The government’s paycheck protection loan program for small businesses is on hold. The Small Business Administration has announced that it reached the $349 billion lending limit for the program.
