The Huawei watch is on. Good news for Huawei is that’s not going to be a death watch. After President Trump signalled a change in policy recently, we have all been waiting for when the change would actually happen — it seems that could come within the next two weeks.
Rueters has been told by two US chipmakers who provide chipsets to Huawei that they are set to apply for licences to sell to Huawei once again. According to a former Commerce Department official, they aren’t the only ones submitting applications with more already doing so. Most are hoping to be able to restart sales within the next two to four weeks.
Of course Huawei continues to profess its innocence and in the face of no proof of national security risk, it seems fair:
…. the Entity list restrictions should be removed altogether, rather than have temporary licenses applied for US vendors. Huawei has been found guilty of no relevant wrongdoing and represents no cybersecurity risk to any country so the restrictions are unmerited.
Behind the scenes the US semiconductor industry continues to lobby the US government to have Huawei removed from the Entity List permanently.
While it is unclear whether the policy will remain in place – and which products will be able to be sold to Huawei – we can only hope that sensible heads prevail and Huawei can return to business as usual within a few weeks.
