U.S. Commerce Department extends Huawei restrictions by 90 days

The U.S. Commerce Department has extended the deadline by 90 days for companies working with Huawei to find alternative business.

In an interview with Fox Business, U.S. commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said there are many telecom companies that are “dependent” on Huawei and as such the deadline has been pushed to November 19th.

“We’re giving them a little more time to wean themselves off,” he said, and indicated that 46 more Huawei subsidiaries have been placed on the Entity List.

In May, U.S. President Donald Trump imposed a ban on companies that pose a national security threat to the U.S. and created an Entity List that includes Huawei.

At the time, the U.S. granted temporary licences to work with Huawei that would have expired on August 19th. It would allow companies to maintain current networks and allow Huawei to provide software updates to existing Android devices.

It is important to note that in July, the Commerce Department granted conditional licences to some companies if they were able to prove that there was no national security threat working with Huawei. That would mean companies like Google would potentially be able to continue doing business with Huawei.

Source: Bloomberg