*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).
During a Wednesday press conference, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said social distancing will be key to making sure state hospitals can handle the apex of cases expected in late April.
Tal Cohen, executive vice president and head of Nasdaq's North American Markets, told Cheddar Wednesday that the markets are beginning to grasp how to function during the outbreak.
Sabine Altendorf of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warned that while so far the impact of the rapidly evolving crisis on food supply has been limited, it could change drastically.
Coronavirus stimulus checks are going to be distributed in the next three weeks, the Internal Revenue Service said Monday, and offered a little bit more clarity on how people can actually get their payments.
Stocks are sinking again on Wall Street as more signs piled up of the economic and physical pain being caused by the coronavirus outbreak.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday warned Americans to brace for a “rough two-week period” ahead as the White House released new projections that there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained.
As some see promising returns from California’s early shelter in place orders, Governor Gavin Newsom announced Tuesday a growing number of cases and hospitalizations in the state as a record number of Californians file for unemployment.
Senator Amy Klobuchar told Cheddar on Tuesday that Americans need cash from canceled flights to provide immediate relief, but airline executives have not responded to the call.
Parsing the data from around the world is showing a stark difference in how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting mortality and socioeconomic suffering along gender lines.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown is pushing forward with his proposal to provide a $10,000 payoff to all federal student loan borrowers in the next round of stimulus funding.
