Posted by Mumbai: Amid the on-going US-China trade war, the Trump administration surprisingly has granted a 90-day temporary license to the Chinese technology giant Huawei on Monday, according to media reports.
This move comes after the US Commerce Department had announced an effective ban on US companies selling or transferring technology to Huawei last week. The Chinese company along many others were placed on Entity List, which means these companies and there activities are posing threats to the US national security and needs to be scrutinized.
The US decree is aimed to cripple Huawei’s supplies that include hardware and software components from American multinational companies like the chip maker Qualcomm and Broadcom, Android software from Google, Intel and others. The ban requires Huawei to take approval from the US administration before buying components from these American companies.
Many of these American companies have already stopped supplies of their components to Huawei, according to media reports. The tactics are similar to what the US had employed to another Chinese communication equipment maker ZTE in 2017 that resulted into company’s blacklisting from the US.
However, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei seems to be unnerved by the Trump administration’s latest move to grant a 90-day temporary license.
In an interview with China’s GlobalTimes on Tuesday, Ren said that the temporary license is not that meaningful for the company, as it is well prepared and has kept its core technologies intact. This does indicate how Huawei is holding its ground firmly against Washington’s political and economical tactics.
The 90-day temporary license to Huawei, will allow the telecom operators in US to make other arrangements to continue their support to Huawei phone users as well as telecom network infrastructure and equipment.
Further, Ren has downplayed the US administration’s aggressive tactics of prohibiting supplies of components from American companies and even valued their role in Huawei’s development.
“In such a critical moment, I’m grateful to US companies, as they’ve contributed a lot to Huawei’s development and showed their conscientiousness on the matter,” Ren said.
“As far as I know, US companies have been making efforts to persuade the US government to let them cooperate with Huawei,” he added.
Probably, Ren’s overwhelming friendly gesture and importance of American companies could soften US President Donald Trump’s stand in the on-going trade war Washington and Beijing.
“We always need US-developed chip sets, and we can’t exclude American products with a narrow mind,” Ren said in the interview.
However, Google has responded positively to Huawei being granted with the 90-day temporary grant. The Alphabet company said that it plans to work with the Chinese company over the next 3 months period.
(Image source – AsiaNikkei.com)