‘Huawei will not disappear from Entity List under President Biden’

It was hoped that President Biden would ease sanctions against Chinese Huawei by removing the company from the Entity List. An initial reaction from the Secretary of State for Trade is not very hopeful – Gina Raimando “sees no reason” to have Huawei removed from the Entity List.

Sanctions against Huawei

President Trump took the decision in 2019 to place Huawei on the Entity List, so that parties from the US are no longer allowed to trade with the Chinese hardware giant. For Huawei, the measures introduced by the Trump government had serious consequences – for example, it decided to sell its subsidiary, Honor, at the end of 2020. Furthermore, the company is thinking about the sale of its high-end phone series and Huawei is almost worldwide banned from 5G networks.

Honor was sold by Huawei and last introduced its first proprietary phone, the View40.

With President Joe Biden taking office, it was hoped for relief so that Huawei can continue to offer its services – both to consumers and to telecom operators that rely on Huawei’s services to maintain their networks. While Biden’s early weeks are all about scrapping Trump decisions, this doesn’t seem to be the case with the former president’s decision on Huawei.

Future of Huawei

Gina Raimando, the appointed Secretary of State for Commerce, said in a response to Bloomberg that she saw no reason to remove the entities from the US Entity List: “I currently have no reason to believe that entities on those lists should not be there. are ”, Raimando said. She further stated that she looks forward to a briefing on these and other entities, at which point Raimando will be briefed on the sanctions imposed is not yet known.

From the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, these sanctions against Chinese companies are characterized as oppression, oppression that according to the Chinese Ministry must stop: “We urge you to stop the willful repression against Chinese companies”.

Whether Raimando will eventually bring relief to companies like Huawei is still unknown. ZTE was previously on the Entity List for security reasons, but was later removed from it. The situation at Huawei is, however, a bit more sensitive, partly because of its 5G network equipment.

Lots of other parties

Under Trump’s rule, more and more companies ended up on the American Entity List, including the Chinese DJI. Xiaomi also recently came under closer surveillance: just before the end of Trump’s term in office, the company was placed on the US military blacklist. Xiaomi is appealing this decision; DJI was also previously blacklisted and later moved to the Entity List. Whether this will also happen to Xiaomi under the new government is unknown.