Breaking: Huawei allowed to do business with U.S. companies again

U.S. companies will be allowed to work with Huawei again, President Trump announced in a news conference.

It’s a stunning, if not entirely surprising turnaround, coming just weeks after the Trump administration called Huawei a major threat to U.S. national security.

Background: Huawei has lost immediate access to Android and Google (Updated) 

On the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Trump said “U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei,” without going into detail. “We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it,” Trump continued. It’s not clear what this means for now, but it’s likely Huawei will be able to acquire basic components like Qualcomm processors and Google’s Android OS.

“I said that’s O.K., that we will keep selling that product, these are American companies that make these products. That’s very complex, by the way. I’ve agreed to allow them to continue to sell that product so that American companies will continue,” Trump said. U.S. chipmakers like Intel and Xilinx reportedly lobbied the U.S. government to ease restrictions on Huawei. In 2018, Huawei spent around $11 billion on chips made by Intel, Qualcomm, and Micron alone.

Earlier this week, the WSJ reported China would make lifting of the Huawei sanctions an essential condition for any trade agreement with the U.S.

For now, Huawei is still on the so called “Entity List” of companies that the U.S. Department of Commerce bars from dealing with American entities. But Trump said his administration will hold meetings about taking the Chinese giant off the blacklist “very soon.”

U.S. and China appear to have reached a breakthrough in talks to resolve their trade war. The latest round of tariffs that were due to go into effect in the next days has been suspended, while China agreed to buy more agricultural products from U.S. farmers.

“We had a very good meeting with President Xi of China, excellent, I would say excellent, as good as it was going to be,” Trump said, according to the BBC. “We discussed a lot of things and we’re right back on track and we’ll see what happens.”

Depending on how fast the U.S. government moves to lift the ban on Huawei, the company could be back in business in as little as a few days.

from Android Authority https://ift.tt/2KLUdxN