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President Trump has said U.S. companies that sell components to Chinese tech firm Huawei will be allowed to continue to do so.
In remarks at a press conference during the G20 summit in Japan, Trump said that he had told the Chinese leader Xi Jinping that Huawei would be allowed to buy U.S. goods once again. ‘We send and we sell to Huawei and tremendous amount of product that goes into the things that they make, and I said that we would keep selling that product’ the president said in answer to a question from the press.
Further remarks suggested the change had been in part due to pressure from U.S. suppliers who were banned from selling their goods to Huawei rather than any material difference in Trump’s position regarding national security concerns around the tech giant’s relationship with the Chinese government. Trump said that the U.S. companies were ‘not exactly happy that they couldn’t sell.’
President Trump has appeared to soften his tone on Chinese communications giant Huawei, suggesting that he would allow the company to once again purchase U.S. technology https://t.co/4YNJCyKLTg pic.twitter.com/jr45f40ghP
— CNN International (@cnni) June 29, 2019
It isn’t clear at this stage what this means or whether all those previously trading with Huawei will be able to begin doing so again. Trump implied that it was ‘Silicon Valley’ firms that he was referring to, and said of the products ‘it’s very complex, by the way, highly scientific.’ This doesn’t really allow us to determine whether the ban is lifted on all the products sold from the U.S. to Huawei or whether he is referring to physical components or software—such as the Android operating system.
The Huawei affair comes against a background of growing trade tensions between the U.S. and China, as President Trump imposed import duties on a range of Chinese products in a move he claimed was to protect U.S. industry and to counter the country’s ‘unfair’ trade deal with the Chinese. In May Trump also banned all U.S. businesses from dealing with Huawei as the company was deemed too close to the Chinese government and a security threat. It isn’t clear what has changed to reduce the threat level of the company’s activities, or whether the change of mood is more to do with internal pressure on the U.S. government from domestic firms losing business because of the ban. More will be revealed.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)