A few days ago, a total ban was issued by the US government on Huawei, stopping it from working with American companies, which in turn, forced Google to briefly revoke Huawei’s license to use Android’s Google Play Services and blocking it from the Android Q beta program. Other American companies such as ARM, Qualcomm, and the SD Association have followed suit, effectively crippling the Chinese giant.
There has been an ongoing trade war between the US and China since Trump’s administration began increasing tariffs on Chinese imports to the US. The Chinese government reacted by increasing its own tariffs on American goods in China.
The official reason which was given by the US government for its actions is that “Huawei’s hardware puts the US at risk of espionage and people continuously using Huawei hardware only lengthens our exposure to the so-called threat.” Even before the US government issued the ban, there was an incident where the Chinese smartphone maker called out the US government a few months ago for singling out Huawei and ruining its reputation in the process.
The US government hasn’t presented any single case or concrete proof to prove whether or not the company poses a security threat to the US.
After an event with the USDA (US Department of Agriculture), President Trump was questioned by a reporter about the Huawei ban. Trump replied with a vague and contradicting explanation.
Huawei is something that’s very dangerous. You look at what they’ve done from a security standpoint, from a military standpoint, it’s very dangerous. So it’s possible that Huawei even would be included in some kind of trade deal. If we made a deal, I could imagine Huawei being possibly included in some form, some part of a trade deal.
If the Chinese company was indeed such a big security threat, why would Trump say that Huawei could be part of a future trade deal? When the US government banned ZTE, there was actual evidence of the company breaking a trade embargo with Iran. The ban on the company was supposed to last 7 years, but the company came to an agreement with the US despite Congress recommending that they don’t. According to the agreement, ZTE was to pay hefty fines and had to comply with the US request to shuffle executives within the company.
