U.S. Bans Sale of Foreign Parts to Huawei that use U.S. Tech

The U.S. has stepped up its war with Huawei by barring the Shenzhen juggernaut from purchasing foreign chips that use U.S. parts.

The U.S. Commerce Department claims the move is meant to close a loophole of sorts.

“These actions, effective immediately, prevent Huawei’s attempts to circumvent U.S. export controls to obtain electronic components developed or produced using U.S. technology,” said the agency.

And there’s a certain logic to that.

If Huawei is, indeed, a pawn of China’s communist government – as the Trump administration and other government entities allege – then acquiring parts that use U.S. technology is nearly as bad as purchasing them directly.

Huawei denies any connection with China’s government, and others question whether tightening the screws on Huawei is good for business in this country. Of course, Huawei’s hands are pretty far from clean, as they’ve been caught in the act of industrial espionage multiple times.

This dovetails nicely with Trump’s outright ban of the video-sharing social media platform TikTok. The app is owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, and Trump claims this represents a national security risk. Like Huawei, ByteDance denies all wrongdoing and any connection to China’s government, but unless something changes, and beginning the week of September 20th, the executive order will prohibit “any transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, with ByteDance Ltd. (a.k.a. Zìjié Tiàodòng), Beijing, China, or its subsidiaries.”

The Commerce Department also added 38 affiliates of Huawei to its “Entity List.”