ZTE suspends smartphone sales, after-sale services to comply with US ban
ZTE was slapped with a seven-year ban prohibiting any of its agents to have any business transactions with the US
ZTE Corp, China’s biggest publicly traded telecommunications equipment provider, has halted sales of its consumer products and related services after the US government last month banned the sale of American technology to the company.
The closure appears to be part of the cessation of “major operating activities” described by the Shenzhen-based company in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange on Wednesday. ZTE was slapped with a seven-year ban prohibiting it from any transactions with the US for breaching the terms of a settlement related to its business dealings with Iran.
The US ban on sales of technology to ZTE comes at a time of escalating trade tensions between the US and China. Liu He, director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs and President Xi Jinping’s most trusted economic adviser, will meet US officials in Washington again next week to continue talks aimed at averting a US-China trade war.
Earlier this month, ZTE said it had filed a formal submission with the Commerce Department, requesting a stay of the sales ban. According to a report in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, a spokesman for the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security, which oversees export controls, said the agency was reviewing ZTE’s appeal and would give it “prompt consideration.”
No products were listed on ZTE’s official online store on e-commerce platform Tmall and the website said it was “undergoing revision”. The site featured a photo of bare-chested men wearing red bandanas rowing dragon boats above a blue caption that said “Spring is used for struggle!”.