Ban lifted: Trump allows trade with Huawei... for now
The story is not over yet, but the American government could relax its trade sanctions against Huawei. While the final decision is still pending, there is already good news for the Chinese manufacturer.
At the current G20 meeting in Japan, China insists that the Huawei ban be the subject of talks on a trade agreement with the US, the Wall Street Journal reports. Accordingly, China insists that the USA lift the sanctions against Huawei, as well as all punitive tariffs.
But we're not there yet. US President Donald Trump said at a press conference that Huawei would only be discussed at the end of the negotiations, writes Forbes. It is not yet clear whether the sanctions will be lifted. And yet there is good news for the Chinese manufacturer and its American partners. Because Trump also said he had allowed trade with Huawei to flow in some cases.
You can find more videos on current technical topics on our video page.
The reason for this was that American companies had suffered under the trade ban. However, in order to support Silicon Valley, he further approved sales to Huawei:
"One of the things I will allow, however, is, a lot of people are surprised we send and we sell to Huawei a tremendous amount of product that goes into the various things that they make. And I said that that’s okay, that we will keep selling that product. These are American companies… that make product and that’s very complex, by the way, and highly scientific. And in some cases we’re the ones that do it, we’re the only ones that do it. What we’ve done in Silicon Valley is incredible, actually and nobody has been able to compete with it, and I’ve agreed and pretty easily, I’ve agreed to allow them to continue to sell that product. So American companies will continue and they were having a problem, the companies were not exactly happy that they couldn’t sell because they had nothing to do with whatever it was potentially happening with respect to Huawei, so I did do that."
Even if a formal decision on the trade dispute is still pending, an agreement is emerging. Trump has also already promised China that it will at least not impose further tariffs.
Chip manufacturers are already working with Huawei again
With this decision regarding sanctions, it will be possible for American engineering companies to continue trading with Huawei without any problems. Some US chip manufacturers had been able to bypass the trade blocks anyway. After the US had placed Huawei on the so-called Entity List, US companies were prohibited from trading with the Chinese manufacturer. Although there is now a transitional period until August, this only applies to components for current products, but not for future ones. The workaround is that some chip manufacturers such as Intel or Micron can trade with Huawei if products are produced outside the USA and do not contain "technology that threatens national security".
Source: Forbes, Wall Street Journal
trump doesnt understand credibility. Either the threat was real or it was posturing. Based on Italy, the threat was real. But trump postured it all into meaninglessness. Never believe anything Trump says
This is basically going to be a ZTE part 2, Huawei will probably face a fine + monitoring to ensure they don't ignore protection of intellectual property (President Trump will boast about the outcome, but will the rest of the Republican Party trust Huawei? I don't think so, they certainly didn't embrace ZTE last year!) 🤷🏼♀️
Sigh, the old "hardly anybody knew" again. Nobody knew healthcare was complicated, nobody knew American companies traded with Huawei...what an embarrassment.