Administration Tightens Huawei Ban

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The Biden administration has stopped approving licenses for U.S. companies to export most items to Huawei, according to three people familiar with the matter, Reuters reports. Huawei has faced U.S. export restrictions around items for 5G and other technologies for several years, but officials in the U.S. Department of Commerce have granted licenses for some American firms to sell certain goods and technologies to the company. For example, Qualcomm Inc. (NASDAQ: QCOM.O) received permission in 2020 to sell 4G smartphone chips to Huawei.

A Commerce Department spokesperson said officials “continually assess our policies and regulations” but don’t comment on talks with specific companies. Huawei and Qualcomm declined to comment. Bloomberg and the Financial Times reported the move earlier. 

Huawei has long denied U.S. government claims that Huawei’s telecom equipment could be used for espionage by China.

A source told Reuters that U.S. officials are creating a new formal policy of denial for shipping items to Huawei that would include items below the 5G level, including 4G items, WiFi 6 and 7, artificial intelligence, and high-performance computing and cloud items.

A different source said the move is expected to reflect the Biden administration’s tightening of policy on Huawei over the past year. Licenses for 4G chips that could not be used for 5G, which might have been approved earlier, are being denied, the source said.

American officials placed Huawei on a trade blacklist in 2019, restricting most U.S. suppliers from shipping goods and technology to the company unless they were granted licenses, Inside Towers reported. Officials continued to tighten the controls to cut off Huawei’s ability to buy or design the semiconductor chips that power most of its products.

Bloomberg noted U.S. officials are at an early stage in talks over Huawei, with any decision potentially to be made in May, around the fourth anniversary of the vendor’s original ban.

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