In a welcome turn of events for Huawei, US President Donald Trump announced that the Chinese company will be allowed to carry out business with US-based companies again. More specifically, the announcement said that US companies will be allowed to sell their products to Huawei. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s now business as usual for Huawei, it is definitely a step in the right direction for them.
This announcement comes nearly one month after the Trump administration placed Huawei on the Entity List prepared by the US Department of Commerce (along with 5 other companies later) and barred them from associating with US companies, on the grounds that their products posed a threat to national security. Despite the uplifting of the ban, Trump has not abandoned the national security rhetoric and said that only those products will be allowed which are not considered a threat.
“U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it.”, said Trump at a news conference after the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan where he also met with Chinese president Xi Jinping. “I said that’s O.K., that we will keep selling that product, these are American companies that make these products. That’s very complex, by the way. I’ve agreed to allow them to continue to sell that product so that American companies will continue.” Trump went on.
Even though Huawei still hasn’t been taken off the Entity List, this relative ceasefire should not come as a surprise for many people, taking into account the billion-dollar contracts that were being affected by this ban. Google alone would have lost nearly 700 million customers if Huawei was no longer allowed to use Android, as claimed by the Huawei CEO. Huawei also had business deals with chip manufacturers Intel, Qualcomm, and Microne worth billions. It was quite clear that Huawei wasn’t the only one getting harmed by the trade embargo.
So what’s next for Huawei? Only time will tell. Right now the US-China trade war is still in full swing and we can only guess what new developments might take shape in the days to come. As for now, users can breathe easy because Huawei is allowed to do business with US companies again.
