Trump Halts Huawei Supply in Final China Blow, Reuters Says
https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/trump-halts-huawei-suppliers-last-000736206.html
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government notified several of Huawei Technologies Co.’s suppliers that it’s revoking their licenses to work with the Chinese company and rejecting other applications in the last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, Reuters reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Current licensed suppliers that have been notified include Intel Corp., Reuters said. In addition, the Commerce Department indicated its intent to deny “a significant number of license requests for exports to Huawei,” according to an email obtained by the news agency. Representatives for Intel and the U.S. Commerce Department didn’t immediately respond to requests by Bloomberg News seeking comment.
The latest move against Huawei is probably the Trump administration’s last strike to weaken the Chinese telecommunications giant and puts the spotlight on how the incoming Biden administration will approach the U.S.-China relationship. Asian chip stocks and Huawei suppliers including Samsung Electronics Co., Tokyo Electron Ltd., Advantest Corp. and Lasertec Corp. slid between 1% and 4% in early Monday trading.
Intel was among a small group of companies that the U.S. government cleared to do business with Huawei, which it put on its so-called entity list of national security threats in May 2019. Trump administration sanctions have cut Huawei off from business-critical relationships with the likes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which provided the Android software on hundreds of millions of Huawei smartphones, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. for its cutting-edge chips.
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government notified several of Huawei Technologies Co.’s suppliers that it’s revoking their licenses to work with the Chinese company and rejecting other applications in the last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, Reuters reported, citing unidentified people familiar with the matter.
Current licensed suppliers that have been notified include Intel Corp., Reuters said. In addition, the Commerce Department indicated its intent to deny “a significant number of license requests for exports to Huawei,” according to an email obtained by the news agency. Representatives for Intel and the U.S. Commerce Department didn’t immediately respond to requests by Bloomberg News seeking comment.
The latest move against Huawei is probably the Trump administration’s last strike to weaken the Chinese telecommunications giant and puts the spotlight on how the incoming Biden administration will approach the U.S.-China relationship. Asian chip stocks and Huawei suppliers including Samsung Electronics Co., Tokyo Electron Ltd., Advantest Corp. and Lasertec Corp. slid between 1% and 4% in early Monday trading.
Intel was among a small group of companies that the U.S. government cleared to do business with Huawei, which it put on its so-called entity list of national security threats in May 2019. Trump administration sanctions have cut Huawei off from business-critical relationships with the likes of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, which provided the Android software on hundreds of millions of Huawei smartphones, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. for its cutting-edge chips.
Huawei has relied on Intel much less, primarily for its servers and consumer laptop products. A representative for the Chinese company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Read more: Trump’s China Inc. Onslaught Leaves Key Decisions for Biden
Trump has escalated his campaign to curb China’s technological rise as his term draws to a close. Xiaomi Corp., another smartphone and consumer electronics vendor, was among nine firms added to the U.S. Defense Department’s list of companies with alleged ties to the Chinese military, a move that will restrict U.S. investments in its securities. Other companies include state-owned planemaker Commercial Aircraft Corp. of China Ltd., or Comac, which is central to China’s goal of creating a narrow-body plane that can compete with Boeing Co. and Airbus SE.
The profile of the companies targeted, including in the latest announcements on Thursday, is staggering. They include China’s three biggest telecom firms, its top chipmaker, its biggest social media and gaming players, its top two smartphone makers, its main deepwater energy explorer, its premier military aerospace contractor, its leading drone manufacturer and its primary commercial planemaker.
While the scope of Trump’s unprecedented actions has roiled markets, the full reckoning of their impact largely hinges on President-elect Joe Biden. His incoming administration will have the power to either keep the restrictions in place, remove them or tighten them further.
Read more: U.S. Blacklists Xiaomi in Widening Assault on China Tech
(Updates with share action from the third paragraph)
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Exclusive: Trump admin slams China's Huawei, halting shipments from Intel, others - sources
By Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper
NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration notified Huawei suppliers, including chipmaker Intel, that it is revoking certain licenses to sell to the Chinese company and intends to reject dozens of other applications to supply the telecommunications firm, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The action - likely the last against Huawei Technologies under Republican President Donald Trump - is the latest in a long-running effort to weaken the world's largest telecommunications equipment maker, which Washington sees as a national security threat.
The notices came amid a flurry of U.S. efforts against China in the final days of Trump's administration. Democrat Joe Biden will take the oath of office as president on Wednesday.
A spokesperson for Intel Corp declined to comment. Commerce said it could not comment on specific licensing decisions, but said the department continues to work with other agencies to "consistently" apply licensing policies in a way that "protects U.S. national security and foreign policy interests."
In an email seen by Reuters documenting the actions, the Semiconductor Industry Association said on Friday the Commerce Department had issued "intents to deny a significant number of license requests for exports to Huawei and a revocation of at least one previously issued license." Sources familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there was more than one revocation. One of the sources said eight licenses were yanked from four companies.
Japanese flash memory chip maker Kioxia Corp had at least one license revoked, two of the sources said. The company, formerly known as Toshiba Memory Corp, said it does not "disclose business details regarding specific products or customers.”
The semiconductor association's email said the actions spanned a "broad range" of products in the semiconductor industry and asked companies whether they had received notices.
The email noted that companies had been waiting "many months" for licensing decisions, and with less than a week left in the administration, dealing with the denials was a challenge.
A spokesman for the semiconductor group did not respond to a request for comment.
Companies that received the "intent to deny" notices have 20 days to respond, and the Commerce Department has 45 days to advise them of any change in a decision or it becomes final. Companies would then have another 45 days to appeal.
The United States put Huawei on a Commerce Department "entity list" in May 2019, restricting suppliers from selling U.S. goods and technology to it.
But some sales were allowed and others denied while the United States intensified its crackdown on the company, in part by expanding U.S. authority to require licenses for sales of semiconductors made abroad with American technology.
Before the latest action, some 150 licenses were pending for $120 billion worth of goods and technology, which had been held up because various U.S. agencies could not agree on whether they should be granted, a person familiar with the matter said.
Another $280 billion of license applications for goods and technology for Huawei still have not been processed, the source said, but now are more likely to be denied.
An August rule said that products with 5G capabilities were likely to be rejected, but sales of less sophisticated technology would be decided on a case-by-case basis.
The United States made the latest decisions during a half dozen meetings starting on Jan. 4 with senior officials from the departments of Commerce, State, Defense and Energy, the source said. The officials developed detailed guidance with regard to which technologies were capable of 5G, and then applied that standard, the person added.
That meant issuing denials for the vast majority of the roughly 150 disputed applications, and revoking the eight licenses to make those consistent with the latest denials, the source said.
The U.S. action came after pressure from a recent Trump appointee in the Commerce Department, Corey Stewart, who wanted to push through hardline China policies after being hired for a two-month stint in the agency at the end of the administration.
Trump has targeted Huawei in other ways. Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's chief financial officer, was arrested in Canada in December 2018, on a U.S. warrant. Meng, the daughter of Huawei's founder, and the company itself were indicted for misleading banks about its business in Iran.
Meng has said she is innocent. Huawei has denied the claims of spying and pleaded not guilty to the indictment, which also includes charges of violating U.S. sanctions against Iran and conspiring to steal trade secrets from American technology companies.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper; editing by Chris Sanders, Jonathan Oatis and Lincoln Feast.)
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Exclusive: Trump administration adds China's Comac, Xiaomi to Chinese military blacklist
By Mike Stone
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration on Thursday added nine Chinese firms to a blacklist of alleged Chinese military companies, including planemaker Comac and mobile phone maker Xiaomi, according to a document seen by Reuters.
The companies will be subject to a new U.S. investment ban which forces American investors to divest their holdings of the blacklisted firms by Nov. 11, 2021.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington, Xiaomi and Comac did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The expanding blacklist is part of a bid by President Donald Trump to cement his tough-on-China legacy in the waning days of his presidency.
It was mandated by a 1999 law requiring the Defense Department to compile a catalogue of companies owned or controlled by the Chinese military. The Pentagon, which only began complying this year, has so far added 35 companies, including oil giant CNOOC and China's top chipmaker SMIC.
In November, Trump sought to give the law teeth by signing an executive order banning U.S. investment of the blacklisted firms.
(Writing and additional reporting by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Alistair Bell)
