Huawei founder predicts limited impact from Trump decision to allow sales of some US tech products to the company

US President Donald Trump’s move to relax a US trade ban on Huawei Technologies will not have much impact as the company will concentrate on its own business, according to its founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei.

“President Trump’s statements are good for American companies. Huawei is also willing to continue to buy products from American companies,” Ren said in a statement, according to a Financial Times report.

“But we don’t see much impact on what we are currently doing. We will still focus on doing our own job right,” he added.

A spokesman for Huawei could not confirm Ren’s comments to the Financial Times.

Huawei is on the US Commerce Department’s so-called Entity List, which effectively bans American hi-tech companies from selling equipment and components to the Shenzhen-based manufacturer, while Washington has also frozen the company out of the country’s 5G network equipment market.

After his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping at the G20 last week, Trump said US companies could resume sales to Huawei as long as the products involved did not threaten national security. He also said the decision on whether to take Huawei off the entity list would be left to later.

Trump’s decision only applies to products widely available in the global market, meaning sensitive equipment is still off limits to Huawei, a top White House aide said on the weekend.

“All that is going to happen is Commerce will grant some additional licences where there is a general availability” of the parts the company needs, National Economic Council chairman Larry Kudlow said on Fox News Sunday.

Trump’s Huawei promise met with silence from China

Ren was quoted saying in the Financial Times that the US has helped Huawei “in a great way by giving us these difficulties.”

“Under external pressure, we have become more united than ever,” Ren said. “If we aren’t allowed to use US components, we are very confident in our ability to use components made in China and other countries.”

Huawei has sharpened its focus on its mainland China business, including telecommunications network gear, smartphones, laptops, surveillance systems and cloud services. The move will have ramifications for its domestic rivals as the company has targeted a significant increase in its share of China’s smartphone and telecoms network equipment markets to help offset potential overseas losses resulting from the US trade ban.

The company, also the largest smartphone vendor in the domestic market, shipped 100 million handsets under the Huawei and Honor brands both domestically and abroad up to May 30, a milestone it did not achieve until July last year and September in 2017, the company said last week. Those shipments were made before the US ban came into effect.

Huawei executives were preparing for a 40 million to 60 million drop in international smartphone shipments this year, Bloomberg said in a report this month, after the company was put on the US trade blacklist last month, which cut off its access to key US technologies, including semiconductors and software.

Ren told CNBC last week that Huawei’s smartphone business outside China was “recovering rapidly” even though the company’s smartphones could lose access to Google services.

Huawei, the world’s largest telecoms gear supplier, has announced 50 commercial 5G network deals, followed by Finland’s Nokia with 43 contracts and Sweden’s Ericsson with 22. Huawei’s crosstown competitor ZTE Corp said it has secured 25 5G network contracts so far.