US will take further action against Huawei if necessary, commerce chief Raimondo says
- Washington says Huawei is a national security threat on a variety of grounds and aggressively lobbied other countries not to use Huawei equipment
- Former president Donald Trump’s administration added Huawei to the US Entity List in May 2019
US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Thursday the Biden administration will take further action against Chinese telecoms firm Huawei Technologies if necessary, after some Republican lawmakers pressed for more steps.
Citing Huawei’s ties to the Chinese government and military, Washington says this makes the company susceptible to “Chinese governmental pressure to participate in espionage”.
In a Reuters interview, Raimondo was asked about Huawei and recounted how she told Republican lawmakers in January “that I wouldn’t be soft and now the proof’s in the pudding – we haven’t been. They shouldn’t worry”.
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Former president Donald Trump’s administration added Huawei to the US Entity List in May 2019 and Raimondo said the list “is a really powerful tool in our toolbox, and we will use it to the fullest extent possible to protect American national security”.
She added: “Will we do more? If we need to, yes.”
Huawei declined to comment on Raimondo’s remarks.
Last month, a group of 14 Republican lawmakers in the US House of Representatives asked the Commerce Department to add Honor to the Entity List.
We’re continuing to work on our export controls
The Republican lawmakers said Honor was spun off “to evade US export control policies”.
The letter cited analysts saying that “selling Honor gave it access to the semiconductor chips and software it relied on and would have presumably been blocked had the divestiture not gone through”.
“We’re continuing to work on our export controls,” Raimondo said.
