Donald Trump ‘ready to lift US ban’ on selling equipment to Chinese tech giant Huawei
- US president says sales will be able to go ahead as long as they don’t raise national security concerns
- Department of Commerce to discuss next week whether to take Chinese company off list of prohibited buyers
American companies will be able to resume selling equipment to Chinese telecom giant Huawei, US President Donald Trump said after his much-anticipated meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Japan on Saturday.
Trump said he was ready to lift a ban to allow US companies to sell “extremely complex” equipment to the Chinese firm, as long as it was “no great national security problem”.
“We mentioned Huawei. We will save that for the end [of the trade negotiations],” Trump said of his meeting with Xi on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka.
“One thing I will allow is that a lot of people are surprised that we sell to Huawei a tremendous amount of products … We are going to continue selling those products.
“I like our companies selling things to others … very complex things. These are not things easy to make … our companies were very upset ... So if it is not a national security issue, we are allowing them to sell.
“Huawei is a complicated situation … We are not discussing Huawei with President Xi yet. We want to see where we end up [in the talks].”