OAN Staff James Meyers
9:25 AM – Wednesday, November 27, 2024
The Chinese government has released three Americans with harsh sentences for alleged spying and drug-trafficking, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take back the White House.
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The release was announced by the outgoing Biden administration and it’s still up in the air whether it was part of a broader deal with Beijing or merely a diplomatic move after Trump threatened a new 10% tariff against China over the country’s fentanyl exports on Monday.
Mark Swidan, Kai Li and John Leung each received significant support among prominent Americans who said their charges by China were false.
Swidan, a Texas businessman, was sentenced to death for suspicious drug offenses after his 2012 arrest and among his US.. supporters has been actor Mel Gibson.
Li, a solar cell businessman who has been jailed since 2016, was serving a 10-year sentence on state security charges, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) was among his advocates.
During a Congressional trip to China last year, Schumer raised concern over Li’s case directly with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Meanwhile, Leung was arrested in April 2021 and was serving a life sentence for alleged espionage.
“Soon they will return and be reunited with their families for the first time in many years,” the White House said in a statement.
Schumer credited Biden, 82, with securing the mass release.
“President Biden’s personal engagement with President Xi made this joyous day possible,” Schumer said. “Thanks to President Biden, all wrongfully detained Americans held in the People’s Republic of China will soon be home.”
However, Trump has vowed a tougher approach to China when he re-enters the White House on January 20th, singling out the issue of fentanyl exports that have killed almost 300,000 Americans during the Biden administration, according to preliminary federal estimates.
“I have had many talks with China about the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl, being sent into the United States – But to no avail,” Trump said in a Monday statement.
“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through, and drugs are pouring into our Country, mostly through Mexico, at levels never seen before. Until such time as they stop, we will be charging China an additional 10% Tariff, above any additional Tariffs, on all of their many products coming into the United States of America.”
The 47th president has discussed the idea of forcing China to pay $50 trillion in “reparations” for mismanaging the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the FBI believes began with a lab leak in Wuhan.
Trump last year called for a “global summit on reparations.”
He also claimed last year that Biden “was bribed and now he’s being blackmailed” and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told the New York Post that Biden was “soft” on China and “it probably has something to do with business relationships and may very well involve Hunter and James Biden and some of the deals they made over there.”
In 2018, Trump imposed a 25% tariff on steel and 10% 10% tariff on aluminum from most countries, including China. He also imposed tariffs between 7.5% and 25% on Chinese goods comprising $362 billion of annual imports, or more than half of the total.
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