Joe Biden’s nominee for key China export post expects Huawei to remain blacklisted

Name: Can Huawei's Harmony OS for smartphones compete with Google's Android and Apple's iOS?
Uploaded: 2021-09-21T17:10:24.000Z
Duration: 3 min 4 s
Description: Can Huawei's Harmony OS for smartphones compete with Google's Android and Apple's iOS?

If confirmed as under secretary of commerce for industry and security, Alan Estevez also pledged to ‘look at’ Honor – the handset unit spun off of Huawei

The ex-Pentagon official said he wanted to see if the Chinese telecoms giant was using the spin-off brand to circumvent its own blacklist designation

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Huawei said last November its consumer business was under tremendous pressure due to “a persistent unavailability of technical elements needed” for its mobile phone business and decided to sell its Honor assets as a result. Photo: Reuters

Reuters

Published: 1:10am, 22 Sep 2021Updated: 9:40pm, 22 Sep 2021

US President Joe Biden’s nominee to a post overseeing export policy on China said on Tuesday he sees Chinese telecoms firm Huawei Technologies Co as a national security threat and expects to keep the company on a trade blacklist unless “things change”.

If confirmed as under secretary of commerce for industry and security, former Pentagon official Alan Estevez also pledged to “look at” Honor Device Co – a handset unit spun off of Huawei – to see whether the telecommunications company was using the spin-off brand to minimise or circumvent its own blacklist designation.

“I’ve seen previous manoeuvres by the Chinese,” Estevez testified at a hearing of the Senate banking committee. “It’s something I’ll have to look at when I get to the department, should I be confirmed. I do not have the information in front of me that would give me the full picture on that.”

Huawei was placed on the trade blacklist by the Trump administration in 2019 over national security concerns, forcing suppliers to apply for a special licence to sell to it.

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Can Huawei's Harmony OS for smartphones compete with Google's Android and Apple's iOS?

The company said last November its consumer business was under tremendous pressure due to “a persistent unavailability of technical elements needed” for its mobile phone business and decided to sell its Honor assets.