Still bad news from Biden for Huawei

Huawei also has no chance of Google Services under President Joe Biden for the time being, according to a new decision about the sanctions.

With the inauguration of Joe Biden as president of the United States, there was briefly hope for Huawei. The Chinese tech brand was banned by Trump and could possibly count on mitigating circumstances. But the same politician who first gave Huawei some hope now takes that away completely. In all likelihood, Google will not return to Huawei for the time being.

Huawei also banned under Biden

With the appointment of a new minister of economic affairs, Gina Raimondo, any possibility of redemption seems to have disappeared for Huawei. Raimondo recently announced that he was considering softening the sanctions against Huawei. But now that she has actually been appointed as ‘Commerce Secretary’, that seems to be over.

In response to questions from Republican politicians, she takes away all hope for Huawei (via: Bloomberg):

I understand that parties appear on the Entity List (…) because they pose a risk to US national security or serve foreign interests. I currently have no reason to believe that parties on that list should no longer be there.

In short, Huawei will have to keep working hard on their own ecosystem powered by HarmonyOS for the time being. It doesn’t look like Google will return to the Chinese brand anytime soon. But this meager prospect for Huawei has additional consequences, because the sanctions had to divest the brand, including Honor.