The Trump administration is trying at all costs to prevent the Chinese telecoms giant from acquiring “made in USA” technologies essential to its phones.
The United States announced Monday to toughen its sanctions against Chinese telecom giant Huawei.
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Washington on Monday toughened its tone against the Chinese technology giant Huawei, described as a “spy” by Donald Trump, by extending the existing sanctions to its international subsidiaries, in a context of degraded relationship between the two countries.
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The United States has banned 38 international subsidiaries of Huawei in order to limit their access to American technologies, the United States Department of Commerce said in a statement on Monday.
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Donald Trump called the Chinese group a “spy” in a telephone interview on Fox News. “You have microchips, things you can’t even see. (…) They spy, ”he assured.
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Huawei denies being in Beijing’s pay and claims to be the target of unfair accusations aimed at hampering its international trade development.
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Armed arm of the Chinese Communist Party
Donald Trump has also threatened countries that do business with Huawei, like the UK, saying, “We won’t do business with you because if you are using a Huawei system it means they are spying on you, it means they are spying on us, and I got almost all the countries to abandon it ”.
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Washington wants to prevent Huawei and other Chinese suppliers from dominating the new technology market and the 5G network. The Trump administration indeed considers Huawei as “an armed wing of the surveillance of the Chinese Communist Party”, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a separate statement.
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Huawei is accused of using its international subsidiaries to circumvent the sanctions, imposed due to fears for national security in view of the company’s supposed links with the Chinese government, which Huawei denies.
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The tougher measures must “protect the national security of the United States, the privacy of our citizens, and the integrity of our 5G infrastructures in the face of the harmful influence of Beijing,” noted Mike Pompeo.
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“Terrible things”
Huawei and its subsidiaries have “stepped up their efforts to obtain advanced semiconductors, developed or produced from American software and technologies, in order to achieve the political objectives of the Chinese Communist Party,” the secretary said. at Commerce Wilbur Ross, cited in the press release.
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In the viewfinder of the Trump administration for a year and a half, Huawei is already on an American blacklist intended to prevent the Chinese group from acquiring “made in USA” technologies essential to its phones.
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This new assault by the United States comes against a backdrop of renewed tensions for several months with China, which Donald Trump criticizes in particular for the Covid-19 pandemic, which he nicknamed “the Chinese virus”.
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“China has done terrible things to us,” the US president lamented again on Monday. “They have prevented (the virus) from spreading in China, but not reaching the United States and the rest of the world,” he continued.
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The United States also accuses the TikTok application, owned by Chinese publisher ByteDance, of spying and wants to ban it from American phones.
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Another point of tension is the situation in Hong Kong, an autonomous territory over which China wants to regain control.
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The trade deal was supposed to ease relations
The two economic powers signed a trade agreement with great fanfare in January. It was to mark a truce in a nearly two-year trade war, and pave the way for new discussions.
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But China has not fulfilled its commitments to purchase American products. A virtual meeting was scheduled for Saturday to take stock, but it was postponed.
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(AFP/NXP)
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