ExclusiveUS agencies to resume talks about further restrictions on sales to Huawei: sources
- Principals at government departments plan to meet as soon as next week to talk about tightening rules for Huawei’s US suppliers
- Focus is on US suppliers that avoid limits on sales to the company by shipping products made in overseas facilities
The US Commerce Department is restarting a campaign to win the support of other federal agencies for a proposal that would further restrict American sales to the Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Principals at multiple departments including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Defence Secretary Mark Esper and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are poised to meet as soon as next week – though the timing is subject to change – to discuss revisions to the proposal, the people said, who asked not to be named because such gatherings are not public.
The proposal, first submitted by the Commerce Department at the start of January, would make it harder for Huawei’s US suppliers to sell their components to the Chinese telecommunications giant from their overseas subsidiaries.
Since the Commerce Department placed Huawei on a so-called entity list last May, US companies have continued to sell to the Chinese firm from their overseas operations. The Trump administration contends that Huawei is a threat to national security, because it might provide confidential data to Chinese intelligence agencies.
When the new restrictions were initially proposed, the Pentagon was concerned that the measures, which would disrupt Huawei’s supply chain further, could also undermine US technological development because the drop in revenues to the US companies might result in less capital those firms would have available for research.