The Commerce Department on Friday said it will restrict telecommunications and consumer electronics company Huawei’s ability to purchase U.S. technology and software that the China-based multinational has been using to design and manufacture semiconductors in violation of U.S. export controls.
In 2019, the department’s Bureau of Industry and Security added Huawei and 114 of its overseas-related affiliates to the Entity List, requiring the company to obtain a license to export U.S. items.
“Despite the Entity List actions the Department took last year, Huawei and its foreign affiliates have stepped-up efforts to undermine these national security-based restrictions through an indigenization effort,” Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. “This is not how a responsible global corporate citizen behaves. We must amend our rules exploited by Huawei and HiSilicon and prevent U.S. technologies from enabling malign activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.”
HiSilicon is a Chinese semiconductor company.
The U.S. government has been working to ban the use of telecommunications technologies made by Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers out of concern that devices and networking systems these companies sell worldwide contain backdoors for use by the Chinese government to spy on governments and companies and also to help them steal intellectual property.
Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Friday said in a statement the new restriction is “another step to protect U.S. national security and the integrity of 5G networks,” adding that “Huawei is an untrustworthy vendor and a tool of the Chinese Communist Party, beholden to its orders.”