US hurts its own tech sector by putting brakes on Huawei trade licenses – report

The White House is holding off on granting licenses that would allow US firms to trade with Huawei, according to Bloomberg. The move, which could hurt the US tech sector, comes after China halted purchases of American crops.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, responsible for granting the special licenses to qualified companies, says he has received 50 requests from firms eager to resume sales to the Huawei and that a decision is “pending.”

Huawei, one of the largest buyers of semiconductors in the world, spent $11 billion last year on components from US companies like Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Google. The continuation of that lucrative trade now depends on reauthorization of the waivers those companies (and many more) were granted to continue selling their products to Huawei after it was blacklisted in May.

The foot-dragging comes after Beijing announced that it would stop purchasing US farming goods. 

US President Donald Trump stated last week that he did not plan to reverse a decision to allow US suppliers of non-national-security-sensitive products to sell to Huawei and said the issue was unrelated to the ongoing trade talks. However, that decision was made in June as part of a trade truce that has since been broken, leaving its future in question – especially now that China has curtailed its US farm product imports, a business that brought in $5.9 billion last year. Some US companies are already feeling the crunch as the absence of Huawei’s business cuts into their bottom line.

The CEOs of several tech firms met with Trump last month to beg him to allow them to continue selling components to Huawei. They argued that the Chinese firm could obtain the products it buys from US companies from Chinese rivals – meaning that the ban would hurt the American tech sector while helping its Asian competitors.

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