Washington: The US Department of Commerce has announced that it would extend a temporary license loosening restrictions on business deals with Chinese tech giant Huawei for another 90 days.
It is the third time that the US government allowed American firms to get the 90-day extension to have “specific, limited engagements in transactions” with Huawei since the Chinese tech giant was put on the Entity List over “national security concerns”, in May, Xinhua news agency reported.
The Department had issued 90-day temporary licenses on May 20 and August 19 respectively, to ease off part of those export restrictions.
“The Temporary General License (TGL) extension will allow carriers to continue to service customers in some of the most remote areas of the US who would otherwise be left in the dark,” Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said on Monday.
Last week, Ross said that some US rural carriers were dependent on Huawei for their 3G and 4G networks, so the main purpose of the temporary licenses is to let those rural carriers continue to operate.
Outside of the TGL scope, any exports, re-exports, or in-country transfers of items subject to the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) will continue to require a license, if granted, after a review by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) under a presumption of denial, according to the department.
Huawei said in a statement on May 20 that the US export control decision was in no one’s interest and will do significant economic harm to the American companies with which the Chinese company does business.
Huawei Chairman Liang Hua said on Monday that the extension’s real impact on the tech giant was very limited since its products were able to be shipped without the reliance on the US components and chips, CNBC reported.
In an August statement, Huawei had noted that “the extension of the TGL does not change the fact that Huawei has been treated unjustly”, and the company called on the American government to put an end to this unjust treatment and remove it from the Entity List.
