Huawei wins 90-day reprieve on US supply ban, but affiliate blacklist expands
- Commerce Department extends temporary general licence until November, but adds more Huawei affiliates to ban
- Huawei says the move violates ‘the basic principles of free market competition’
The US government on Monday gave China’s Huawei Technologies a 90-day extension to the reprieve that lets the company continue to do business with American counterparts, a move that US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he made to prevent disruption at some rural US telecom networks.
That reprieve was to have expired on Monday, but is now extended until November 19.
In making the announcement, the US Commerce Department also said that more Huawei affiliates would be subject to the underlying ban on business with the company, a move which Huawei denounced as “politically motivated”.
Earlier this year, Huawei was included on the Commerce Department’s “Entity List”, which prevents the company from buying American-made technology, owing to concerns that Huawei’s operations constituted a threat to national security. The move has been seen as an escalation of the US-China trade war that has been intensifying for more than a year.
“As we continue to urge consumers to transition away from Huawei’s products, we recognise that more time is necessary to prevent any disruption,” Ross said in the department announcement.