Microsoft’s reply to that was to suggest more transparency, according to Smith. “Great, show us what you know so we can decide for ourselves. That’s the way this country works,” he said.

“Brad was talking about the need for countries to use consistent principles before imposing significant sanctions on any company, and that those principles should be grounded in due process, the rule of law and transparency of approach,” a Microsoft spokeswoman told the Post in response to the Bloomberg article.

The two major areas of business between Huawei and Microsoft – Windows operating systems for laptops and other content-related services – have both been suspended by the US company to comply with US government restrictions, the report said.

The Windows operating systems equipped on existing Huawei notebook computers will remain eligible for updates and security protection. Microsoft’s services team for Huawei, however, has moved out of the telecoms gear maker’s headquarters in Shenzhen.

Microsoft’s Smith warned that the Trump administration’s trade restrictions could expand beyond Huawei, which would jeopardise the US tech company’s competitiveness in the global market. “You can’t be a global technology leader if you can’t bring your technology to the globe,” he said.