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Comment by dsl | Hacker News Reader

A tl;dr to address some of the obvious questions here:

In 2013 she set up a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom Tech. That company (attempted to) purchase HP computers from the United States and resell them to Iran. The deal did not involve Huawei products, but many of the documents related to the deal were labeled "Huawei confidential" indicating they created the shell company to conceal their involvement.

She broke the law by attempting to do a straw purchase for the Iranian government of US manufactured restricted goods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_purchase

Canada has an extradition agreement with the United States, so the Canadian government arrested her on behalf of the US.

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It's kinda scary that the US can do anything about straw purchases. US company sells to HK company, the stuff becomes property of HK company, US should be completely out of the goddamn picture at this point, HK company sells to Iran, done. The US govt must not be able to do anything about the HK company's intention to resell.

I disagree.

Take Arms. Lets say the US has an arms embargo with a country like Iran. You would agree that it definitely is a violation (and it would be of many international treaties) to purchase US arms as a Hong Kong (replace with whatever country) firm and then resell them to Iran. Now, with computers being the next front of warfare, computer tech is treated similar to arms.

The whole movie 'War Dogs' is about people doing this with Soviet Arms, repackaging them, and selling them to the US. It was illegal, hence they got locked up at the end

This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos. I understand that prohibiting resale can be abused - it's illegal to prohibit resale under many circumstances in the US under antitrust law for example. But that only applies within the US market. The example here is a company deliberately breaching an embargo. If we allowed these sorts of sales then this could prompt the US to take even more drastic measures to enforce its sanctions, like blockading Iranian ports.

>This is essentially saying that it should be legal to circumvent embargos.

Yes, that's true. The US embargo policies undermine the prosperity of foreign and predominantly poor nations (including Cuba), the freedom of companies to engage in business with third partners, and the sovereignty of other nations, in this case, Canada.

It is a shame that the US can still bully businesses and countries around like this, and it is an even bigger shame that Canada complies.

Yes, it's attacking their prosperity. That's the whole point of embargos: to attack the prosperity of countries that are doing bad things (like developing nuclear weapons). We choose to attack countries prosperity because it's drastically less harmful than attacking them militarily. For that reason it's crucial that those who circumvent embargos are held responsible.

To use an analogy, if the US is a cop the embargos are her taser and military intervention are her handgun. Outside of exigent circumstances she should prefer the former to the latter. While it's worthwhile to criticize unnecessary usages of the former, removing the less lethal option means plenty of bad actors get shot when getting tased would have resolved the threat.

Would you rather have a ground war in Iran or North Korea? How about Ukraine? That's the alternative to sanctions/embargoes.

The other alternative would be to stay out of the affairs of foreign countries.

True. I don't expect them to give us or others the same courtesy in response.

This is not because the US is the big dog in the world (well okay, that's a factor, but not the main factor). This is because these things are always reciprocal cooperation agreements. The US goes to Canada (or some other country) and says "Hey, if you'll help us enforce our embargoes, we'll help you enforce yours." And the other country says "Deal!"

EDIT: Above is the carrot. There are also sticks that can be brought to bear, like import tariffs.

> The US govt must not be able to do anything about the HK company's intention to resell.

What does that statement mean?

Ah, if it's not buying with the intention to resell that's illegal, but the resale itself, it means nothing.

I just think it's weird that the US law handles the resale case. Like they think they have authority over the whole world.

The US supposedly loves private property. But this transitive application of trade restrictions sounds like complete disrespect of private property. (And honestly even just any trade restrictions in general…)

My question was significantly higher level than that. The United States exists to further the objectives of the United States. You made the statement 'The US govt must not be able to...'.

What does that statement mean given that (1) the United States is most certainly able to, (2) the United States merely looks after its own interests, and (3) there is no (earthly at least) authority which can actually judge the United states's actions in this case.

Thus, what does it mean to say '<insert country here> must not'? By what standard?

Every other nation has trade embargo's as well. And when they want to arrest someone in the US for violating those, the US will do just that. People are a little overly obsessed with the US being behind it.

Because the Computers are the property of HK company at that time, so the question is do US has any further rights on what is being done with them.

This being HP computers, it may be possible that they might even have been made in China/HK themselves.

What if it was used second hand computers, aren't their rightful owners free to dispose them at their will without deferment to any trade restrictions sanctioned by the country of their origin.

> Because the Computers are the property of HK company at that time, so the question is do US has any further rights on what is being done with them.

By the standards of the United states of America, yes the government of the United States of America has every right to do so.

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