In a totally unsurprising turn of events, President Trump has lifted the ban on Huawei. Allowing the company to work with US companies such as Google, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Intel and others.
While at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan on Saturday, President Trump stated that “US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei.” He clarified by stating that “we’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it.” Though it’s still not entirely clear what Trump means by that, just yet. But it does sound like Trump is saying no to Huawei’s networking gear, but smartphones and laptops are okay.
The main reason for lifting the ban? President Trump realized how badly this ban was affecting US companies. Trump, along with the rest of the world, likely didn’t realize how much this ban would impact American companies. Seeing as the majority of the parts that Huawei uses in its products, are coming from US companies – though they might be manufactured elsewhere. And this ban was causing all sorts of job-less in the US, something that President Trump doesn’t want to see, especially now that the 2020 race is heating up.
Huawei can work with US companies again, but the company is still on the Entity List. That might change later on, as President Trump eluded too, when speaking with the press in Osaka.
This all came about after talks with Chinese President Xi started to breakthrough. The two sides had been planning to meet while in Osaka, to hash out a trade deal. Neither side figured that the Trade War would be ending after the G20, but at least get something going. Trump is looking to get a more favorable trade deal with China, seeing as the majority of products bought in the US were made in China. Meanwhile, China’s top priority at the G20 was to get the Huawei ban lifted. And it looks like that did indeed work.
While the ban is lifted, that doesn’t mean that this is back to normal for Huawei. The ban should be completely lifted in the next few days, it’ll depend on how fast the US government moves – which we know is not “fast” at all. Huawei had stockpiled components from American companies well before being placed on the Entity List in May. This stockpile would last them for about three months. So they are still good to go with using Qualcomm and Intel chipsets.
But that doesn’t mean that everything will be fine for Huawei. This ban has severely ruined Huawei’s reputation, all because Trump wanted to use the company as a pawn to get China to the table for trade negotiations. Many people are worried that their Huawei smartphone won’t get any Android updates, that’s no longer an issue. But the longer lasting effect is that now everyone thinks that Huawei does spy on them, for the Chinese government. Which is going to make it much harder for Huawei to become the biggest smartphone maker that it wanted to be, this year.