More companies joined efforts to cut ties with Huawei and stop supplying the Chinese electronics giant with their technologies following a ban signed by United States President Donald Trump last week.
Panasonic is one of the latest to comply with the executive order and subsequent blacklisting that saw the American government forbid the delivery of any stateside technologies to the company, citing national security concerns. The Japanese firm clarified that while the move is global in nature, it does come with an exception seeing how its Chinese branch will continue collaborating with Huawei, meaning its decision may not be as consequential seeing how Huawei bases the vast majority of its manufacturing operations in the Far Eastern country.
Regardless, any Panasonic solutions including American tech will be pulled from the table, assuming they haven’t been already. Given the high degree of uncertainty stemming from the current situation, Panasonic isn’t expected to start reworking its technologies solely with the goal of making them less reliant on American hardware and software so as to be able to continue working with Huawei unobstructed, though that possibility may become more plausible if the U.S. government signals the newly enacted ban is more permanent in nature than it seems so far.
Taiwanese semiconductor firm TSMC is one of the rare few major technology providers that’s still doing regular business with Huawei in the aftermath of the U.S. ban. The chipmaker insists the executive order from the White House doesn’t affect its business with the Shenzen-based conglomerate in any way, essentially saying none of its solutions are based on American technologies – patented or otherwise.
As the same time, the Trump administration is pressuring South Korean companies into falling in line while simultaneously asking the Seoul-based government to follow suit and join its anti-Huawei campaign. The electronics juggernaut itself is labeling those lobbying efforts as being anti-China in nature, claiming the U.S. is simply trying to cripple its operations because it realizes its own companies are not able to compete with neither its smartphones nor its wireless infrastructure which is currently in the process of being upgraded to support the fifth generation of mobile networks.
Washington repeateadly denied those accusations, yet never shied away from the fact that part of the reason for its push against Huawei has to do with its ongoing trade negotiations with China that have been ongoing for about a year now without much progress. That sentiment is what Huawei CFO Meng Wenzhou is currently using as the basis for claiming her persecution in Canada which is currently evaluating an extradition request from the U.S. Department of Justice is politicized.
On the other hand, the DOJ is accusing her of being personally involved in an illegal banking scheme that defrauded a number of American financial institutions as part of a cover operation aimed at circumventing stateside trade sanctions the Department of Commerce imposed on Iran. The highly unusual case isn’t expected to be concluded until at least early next year, though it remains to be seen in what state will Huawei be at that point.