The administration of the President of the United States, Donald Trump has made it plain how it wants to alleviate the restrictions that were placed on US companies that Chinese company, Huawei wants to trade with. Functionaries stated that the Chinese company will still remain on the Entity List but, licenses will be issued to allow the tech giant trade with US companies under some given circumstances. For those who don’t know, being placed on the Entity List means that Huawei is not permitted to trade in technology with companies in the US except the government gives permission.
Our sources reported that while he was giving a speech, the US Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross said that his department “will issue licenses where there is no threat to US national security”. Then he went on to state explicitly that, “Huawei itself remains on the Entity List, and the announcement does not change the scope of items requiring licenses.”
On a different occasion, the director of the White House National Economic Council, Larry Kudlow, said the United States had “opened the door – relaxed a bit, the licensing requirements form the Commerce Department.” He stated that the US government will not buy parts from Huawei, however, components that are not a danger to security will be permitted. He further said that the aim of this was to lessen the requirements “for a limited time period” as gathered by our sources, in such a way as to keep open the option of re-imposing the restrictions if trade talks go down the drain.
The speeches made by both the Commerce Secretary and the director of the White House National Economic Council makes clear the comments of the US President after he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in June. During that meeting, President Donald Trump said that the two countries will resume their trade talks and the issuance of additional tariffs had been intermitted. However, the announcement produced the implication (appearing in other speeches of Donald Trump) that the ban on Huawei arose because of ongoing trade disputes rather than national security concerns.
What we’re not entirely clear on, is what components of technology pose a threat to national security and which ones do not. According to the reports we got from some of our sources, companies in the United States such as Intel and Qualcomm have engaged in lobbying under wraps for the United States government to lessen the restrictions that have been placed on companies that want to trade witth Huawei. They claim that consumer products like smartphones and computer servers do not pose a threat to security as much as critical equipment infrastructure.
