Biden administration denies licenses to export Huawei products

Three people familiar with the matter said that the Biden administration stopped approving licenses for U.S. companies to export most items to China's Huawei.

U.S. export restrictions on 5 G and other technologies have been granted for several years by the U.S. Department of Commerce, but officials in the U.S. Department of Commerce have granted licenses for some American firms to sell certain goods and technologies to the company. Qualcomm Inc. was allowed to sell 4 G smartphone chips to Huawei in 2020.

A Commerce Department spokeswoman said officials always assess policies and regulations but do not comment on talks with specific companies. Qualcomm didn't want to say anything. The Financial Times and the Bloomberg reported on the move.

One person familiar with the matter said that the US government is creating a new formal policy of denial for shipping items to Huawei that would include items below the 5 G level, including 4 G items, Wifi 6 and 7, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing and cloud items.

Another person said the move was expected to reflect the Biden administration's tightening of policy on Huawei over the past year. Licenses for 4 G chips that could not be used for 5 g, which might have been approved earlier, were denied, the person said. At the end of the Trump administration and early in the Biden administration, officials had still granted licenses for items specific to 4 G applications.

American officials placed Huawei on a trade blacklist in 2019 that prohibits most US suppliers from shipping goods and technology to the company unless they are granted licenses. Officials tightened controls in order to cut off Huawei's ability to buy or design the semiconductor chips that power most of its products.

U.S. officials granted licenses that allowed Huawei to receive some products. From April through November 2021, suppliers to Huawei got licenses worth $61 billion to sell to the telecoms equipment giant.

In December, Huawei said its total revenue was about $91.53 billion, down only slightly from 2021, when U.S. sanctions caused its sales to fall by nearly a third.