What you need to know

  • Reuters has claimed the U.S. Commerce Department may give Huawei 90 more days to purchase components from American companies.
  • The temporary license granted to Huawei in May is set to expire on August 19.
  • Trump, however, has said that he doesn't want U.S. companies to have any business ties with Huawei.

Update: The Commerce Department has now officially confirmed that the temporary reprieve has indeed been extended by 90 days. According to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the decision was taken to "minimize disruption" in rural America that relies on Huawei's telecommunication equipment. At the same time, the Commerce Department has added 46 Huawei subsidiaries to its "Entity List", banning U.S. companies from doing business with them.

Original story follows:

The U.S. Commerce Department may soon renew the "temporary general license" granted to Huawei by 90 days, according to a new report from Reuters.

Shortly after Huawei was put on the Entity List by the Trump administration in May, the Commerce Department had issued a 90-day reprieve to the company that allowed it to continue purchasing components from American companies. Since the current agreement is set to end today, we expect an official statement from the Commerce Department confirming another 90-day extension to arrive later in the day.

U.S. President Donald Trump, however, is still not keen on allowing U.S. companies to do business with Huawei. Speaking to the media before departing from Morristown, New Jersey, Trump said:

At this moment it looks like we are not going to do business. I don't want to do business at all because it is a national security threat and I really believe that the media has covered it a little bit differently than that.

The "temporary general license", if extended, will allow the Chinese company to continue providing software updates to its phones and maintain its existing telecommunications networks in rural U.S. Huawei was put on the Entity List in May over concerns that the company's telecommunications equipment could be used for spying by the Chinese government. More recently, the company was alleged to have helped governments in Africa to spy on political opponents.

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