[olliej]

The problem isn't selling things in the US or not, the problem is that they were deliberately choosing to sell to Iran and North Korea, despite trade sanctions and export restrictions.

They had been caught, they paid a fine, but then it turned out that they were deliberately planning to continue selling them, despite already being caught, charged, fined, and agreeing to stop.

The /only/ way that they could be made to stop selling restricted components from the US was clearly to prohibit them from using those components at all.

What do you propose as an alternative?

[fspeech]

I added a note in my original comment to emphasize that I was responding to the specific argument by the parent comment.

On the factual basis the ban is reinstituted not for the reason you stated that "they were deliberately planning to continue selling them". That was part of the case the led to the original fine. The reimposition of the ban is on a more technical ground.

[fspeech]

By the way under the original settlement ZTE is under much stricter supervision and audit. If you kill off ZTE you lose that control as well. The decision to reinstate the ban was apparently done without sufficient deliberation and hurts US interests on many fronts.