US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has reportedly said licences that permit US companies to sell components to Huawei could be “forthcoming very shortly”.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Ross said a US-Huawei deal was on track to be signed this month, noting that the government has received 260 requests for the licences.
“That’s a lot of applications — it’s frankly more than we would’ve thought,” Ross said.
“Remember too, with Entity Lists, there’s a presumption of denial. So the safe thing for these companies would be to assume denial, even though we will obviously approve quite a few of them.”
There are currently over 100 Chinese entities, including Huawei, that have been added to the US trade blacklist, which has prevented them from purchasing US software and components.
Huawei was added to the blacklist in May, and last month, the US added 28 more Chinese entities including Hikvision and Dahua Technology, two of the world’s largest manufacturers of surveillance technology.
The Trump administration had been considering whether to add Hikvision to its Entity List since May but did not make an official decision until last month.
The US has currently granted temporary licences to US companies to trade with Huawei where it is for the purpose of “maintaining and supporting existing and currently fully operational networks and equipment, including software updates and patches”. These temporary licences expire at the end of this month.
“We’re in good shape, we’re making good progress, and there’s no natural reason why it couldn’t be,” Ross said in the interview about any US-Huawei licence deal.
“But whether it will slip a little bit, who knows. It’s always possible.”
