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Attorney General William Barr on Thursday said U.S. technology companies including Apple and Google have been “all too willing” to collaborate with China’s Communist Party, as he tore into that country’s leaders in a fiery speech.
Speaking at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich., Barr said that “over the years, corporations such as Google GOOG, -0.80% GOOGL, -1.03%, Microsoft MSFT, -2.03%, Yahoo and Apple AAPL, -1.71% have shown themselves all too willing to collaborate with the CCP.”
He listed as an example Apple’s removal of the Quartz news app from its app store in China, following a Chinese government complaint.
The criticism of U.S. companies came amid a broad speech on China, in which Barr said the Chinese Communist Party was seeking to “make the world safe for dictatorship” and accused China of waging an “economic blitzkrieg” against the U.S. in a bid for global dominance.
As the U.S. presidential election nears, China appears to be increasingly in U.S. crosshairs. Last week, FBI Director Chris Wray said China was trying to “compromise” American companies and institutions doing COVID-19 research.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, has said he has no plans to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping, whom he had previously described as a friend.
