US Places Further Sanctions on Huawei Telecommunications

 

In a move which sends a strong message to the Chinese telecommunications conglomerate Huawei and any entity which might have thought of contracting with it, the United States took stronger measures to counteract its spread across the world on Monday

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced in a press release that the US has already persuaded a number of European nations to abandon their plans to allow the Chinese firm to manage telecommunications, believing it was an “untrustworthy vendor” engaging in spying on individuals and other entities through its communications apparatus, especially the computer chips it employs.

Charging that Huawei is actually an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) surveillance state, Pompeo said that the US “has taken action accordingly.”

The measures taken will, in Pompeo’s words, “protect U.S. national security, our citizens’ privacy, and the integrity of our 5G infrastructure from Beijing’s malign influence.”

Also on Monday, President Trump slammed the Chinese telecommunications giant in an interview on the television show Fox & Friends, saying “We don’t want their equipment in the United States because they spy. Any country that does business with them, we aren’t going to share intelligence with.”

“Huawei is a disaster. The UK and the EU were going to go with Huawei but we told them if you use the Huawei system, we’re not going to share intelligence with you. If you use that system, that means they are spying on you — and that means they are also spying on us.”

“We’ve gotten just about every country to drop it,” Trump noted, before adding, “China has taken advantage of our country in the past 25 years like nobody else.”

The Commerce Department’s expansion of the Foreign Direct Product Rule will help prevent Huawei from circumventing U.S. law through alternative computer chip production and even the provision of off-the-shelf chips produced with tools that were acquired from the United States.

This week’s measure follows the US’ more limited expansion of the Foreign Direct Product Rule in May “which Huawei has continuously tried to evade,” according to Pompeo.

The Secretary of State said that the US is adding meat to their many statements warning the world about the dangers of Huawei with actions taken by every possible arm of the  government. Pompeo stated that the Department of Justice has now indicted Huawei for stealing U.S. technology, conspiracy, wire fraud, bank fraud, racketeering, and helping Iran to evade sanctions, amongst other charges.

Pompeo said that the United States will continue to restrict most U.S. exports to Huawei and its affiliates on the Entity List for activities that threaten U.S. national security and international stability, and that the US “urges our allies and partners to join us.

“We will not tolerate efforts by the CCP to undermine the privacy of our citizens, our businesses’ intellectual property, or the integrity of next-generation networks worldwide,” he added.

Secretary Pompeo’s statement concluded by saying that “the United States has provided ample time for affected companies and persons – primarily Huawei customers – to identify and shift to other sources of equipment, software, and technology and wind-down their operations. Now that time is up.”