Daily Management Review

Trump To Respond Fast To License Requests By US Firms To Sell To Huawei


07/23/2019




Trump To Respond Fast To License Requests By US Firms To Sell To Huawei
United States president Donald Trump agreed to make “timely” decisions with respect to allowing American companies to sell to the Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd – currently blacklisted by the US Commerce Department, following a series of requests by US companies at a meeting held on Monday which was attended by a host of executives of tech companies such a Google, the White House said.  
 
The White House said in a statement that the executives of the companies “requested timely licensing decisions from the Department of Commerce” and added that “strong support” was expressed by the executives over the issue of restrictions because of national security on the Chinese firm in terms of purchasing and sale.
 
The participating companies in the meeting included Cisco Systems Inc , Intel Corp, Broadcom Inc, Qualcomm Inc , Micron Technology Inc and Western Digital Corp and Alphabet Inc’s Google.
 
The relationship between American companies with China’s Huawei has been very uncertain ever since the Chinese firm was blacklisted by the US administration by placing it on a so called ‘entity list’ in May this year citing using its equipment would jeopardize the national security of the US. Huawie is the largest manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in the world.
 
The blacklisting of Huawei meant that no American company would be able to do any business with the Chinese firm in terms of goods or technology except for special permission from the Trump administration. However last month, Trump indicated that it could soon create a way to enable American companies to do business with Huawei as Washington attempted opt restart negotiations on trade with Beijing.
 
There is however still no clarity about the US’s new policy towards Huawei.
 
According to reports quoting people present in Monday’s meeting that the executives of the tech companies criticized the role of Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross over allegations that he had not been able to provide any guidance and clarity of how to American companies should deal with Huawei in terms of business relations. Sources said that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow also attended the meeting.
 
The meeting was attended by Micron Chief Executive Sanjay Mehrotra. Confirming the meeting and the attendance of Mehrotra, Micron said in a statement that the “policies that ensure open and fair trade on a level playing field are essential to ongoing U.S. technology leadership as well as economic growth throughout the world.” For Micron, Huawie is its largest customer and te company started shipments of some of its products to the Chinese company last month.
 
In an earlier statement, Ross had said that American companies would be given licenses to deal with Huawei in cases that pose no threat to US’s national security.
 
There was however a report on Monday published in the Washington Post which claimed that North Korea had been secretly helped by Huawie to maintain the commercial wireless network in the rouge country.
 
(Source:www.reuters.com)