It’s likely Trump didn’t anticipate the worldwide ripple effect his Huawei sanction would cause, and now he has gone back on his initial ban. After placing Huawei on the US ‘Entity List’, president Donald Trump said this weekend that he’ll lift some of the restrictions that barred American firms from selling critical tech and components to Huawei without a US government license.
“U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it. I said that’s O.K., that we will keep selling that product, these are American companies that make these products. That’s very complex, by the way. I’ve agreed to allow them to continue to sell that product so that American companies will continue,” Trump said in a press conference at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan.
Back on the Huawei
Huawei’s not in the clear just yet though — this is just the first step in the right direction concerning trade talks between China and the US. Chinese president Xi Jinping had to agree to certain trade deals with the US in order to sway Trump on the Huawei ban. It’s also worth noting that Huawei remains on the US Entity List, which bars US firms from doing business with it. That may change, depending on how talks between the two countries go in the coming days.
It’s also not clear at the moment if the “equipment” Trump keeps mentioning includes software. He refers to “products” later in the statement, so we’re not quite sure whether Google and Facebook will be able to resume trade with Huawei in the future. Nonetheless, this is likely good news for Qualcomm, Intel, and other US tech firms who have lost Huawei’s mobile business in the past month.
Right now it’s not clear when trade will be allowed to resume, and what the limitations will be, but we’re excited just knowing that Huawei could have access to Android security updates in future… assuming everything goes well in the trade talks and Trump doesn’t back track, that is.
Source: CNN