Navarro: ‘We’d Feel More Comfortable’ if Microsoft Divested Chinese Holdings

On Monday’s broadcast of “CNN Newsroom,” White House Trade Adviser Peter Navarro stated that Microsoft’s cooperation with China is an issue as Microsoft seeks to purchase TikTok and stated, “maybe Microsoft could divest its Chinese holdings and then we’d feel more comfortable.”

Navarro said, “The issue with Microsoft is this: Microsoft is one of four or five American technology companies, Yahoo, Google, Cisco, and others, who helped China originally build their great firewall of China, which is used to surveil, track, monitor, censor, and imprison the Chinese people. But more importantly, the — one of the few surviving search engines from America in China is Bing, so, you know — and Microsoft owns that. So, you know that there’s some fishy stuff going on there. Plus…if you’re in China and doing a Skype call, which is another Microsoft product, the CCP’s listening in. So, the question is, is Microsoft going to be compromised? Would it be useful to have a rule if you sell it that — maybe Microsoft could divest its Chinese holdings and then we’d feel more comfortable.”

He added, “I mean, whose software does the People[‘s] Liberation Army in China run on? Microsoft. Who — the Chinese Communist Party, whose software do they use to do their — all the things they do? It’s Microsoft. So, this is not a white hat company, right? It’s an American company. It’s clearly a multi-national company that’s made billions in China, that enables Chinese censorship through things like Bing and Skype.”

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