Considering the President is now talking about tariffs on an additional $200 billion in Chinese goods the question is why would he now want to continue through with his help for ZTE? If makes no sense to assist them in the middle of a trade war, does it?
Qualcomm, Intel, Acasia are just a few of the American companies who will be hurt by the sanctions.
The profit made by ZTE in violating sanctions was incorporated into the assessed fine of 1.3 billion dollars as well as an additional $400 million they must put in escrow in case any other violations are discovered.
Trump is walking a fine line between punishing ZTE and preventing harm to American based companies with whom ZTE does about 25% of it’s entire business.
It only makes sense if the goal was to get the congress and senate upset enough to get them off their duffs to do something. Trump has been doing most of the heavy lifting and the congress and the senate have been basically on the bench. This seems to have got them moving, at least a little.