President Donald Trump has decided to allow expanded sales of US technology supplies to Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei.
This comes as the world’s two largest economies agreed to resume trade talks at the weekend, after they broke down last month.
Speaking to journalists at press conference at the annual G20 Leaders' Summit in Osaka, Japan, Trump shed some light on his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping.
“US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. I’m talking about equipment where there is no great national emergency problem with it. But the US companies can sell their equipment. So we have a lot of the great companies in, Silicon Valley and based in different parts of the country, that make extremely complex equipment. We’re letting them sell to Huawei,” said Trump.
The United States has for months been rallying its allies to cut Huawei out of planned 5G networks, citing "national security threats" due to the company’s close ties to the Chinese government. Huawei has denied installing any backdoors in its networking equipment for alleged government spying.
In May, Trump upped the ante in his battle with Huawei, issuing an executive order declaring a national emergency over ICT threats.
The US Department of Commerce then officially placed Huawei and 70 of its affiliates on the Bureau of Industry and Security’s “entity list”, effectively banning the firm from buying components from US companies without government approval.
The commerce ban does not stop US companies from buying Huawei gear, but instead bans Huawei from obtaining its supply chain components from US companies. This could be a big problem for the Chinese firm, which relies on US companies for components for its gear.
Commenting on taking Huawei of the commerce department’s entity list, Trump said talks are ongoing, adding a meeting will be held tomorrow or Tuesday.
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