Huawei, SMIC Suppliers Received Billions Worth of Licenses For US Goods (reuters.com) 14
Suppliers to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and China's top chipmaker SMIC got billions of dollars worth of licenses from November through April to sell them goods and technology despite their being on a U.S. trade blacklist, documents released by Congress showed on Thursday. Reuters reports: According to the documents, first obtained by Reuters, 113 export licenses worth $61 billion were approved for suppliers to ship products to Huawei while another 188 licenses valued at nearly $42 billion were greenlighted for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC). The data also showed that more than 9 out of 10 license applications were granted to SMIC suppliers while 69% of requests to ship to Huawei were approved over the same period.
[T]he Commerce Department said that the release of an "arbitrary snapshot" of license approvals "risks politicizing the licensing process and misrepresenting the national security determinations" made by the government. It also stressed that approved license applications do not represent actual shipments and around half of all licenses are used. It added that license applications involving Huawei and SMIC are processed under policies developed by the Trump administration and maintained by the Biden administration.
A former senior Commerce Department official in the Trump administration who declined to be named echoed the agency's view. "This very small period of license activity is not an accurate window into the Huawei and SMIC license process," he said, noting that the goal of preventing the companies from obtaining leading edge technology without unnecessarily harming U.S. exports of other goods had been successful. "This [document release] seems designed to mislead people and generate headlines," he added.
[T]he Commerce Department said that the release of an "arbitrary snapshot" of license approvals "risks politicizing the licensing process and misrepresenting the national security determinations" made by the government. It also stressed that approved license applications do not represent actual shipments and around half of all licenses are used. It added that license applications involving Huawei and SMIC are processed under policies developed by the Trump administration and maintained by the Biden administration.
A former senior Commerce Department official in the Trump administration who declined to be named echoed the agency's view. "This very small period of license activity is not an accurate window into the Huawei and SMIC license process," he said, noting that the goal of preventing the companies from obtaining leading edge technology without unnecessarily harming U.S. exports of other goods had been successful. "This [document release] seems designed to mislead people and generate headlines," he added.
US companies got billions of sales (Score:2)
Isn't that's what it really meant? These are businesses for US companies, i.e. jobs for Americans. Or did Huawei put a gun to US supplies to force them to hand over for free?
Why don't media also reports "US received hundreds of billions worth of goods from China every year"?
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What this means is that Biden is relaxing one more of the pressure points Trump was using to squeeze China. Whether that is good or bad I will leave to the reader. But Trump was preventing US companies from doing business with a wide variety of Chinese companies and this was putting a LOT of pressure on China. Trump, as you may recall, also was detaining the CFO of Huawei (she was also recently released). So it would seem that Biden is adopting a more business as usual mode of operation (despite whatever he
The USA should look at history... (Score:4, Interesting)
When the USA denied China access to rocket tech in the early 80s, they developed their own with Soviet help. They are self sufficient in this sphere now.
When the USA led a "coalition" to deny China access to the International Space Station, China developed its own.
Guess what...chips will be next. The Chinese are said to be a few generations behind. Not so bad if I may add. They will catch up like they have in other areas.
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Especially when you consider that rocket engineering is mostly a solved problem, and the US and Soviets have been at parity for decades with few improvements in that time other than the recently achieved re-use capabilities.
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This is why Taiwan is so important. TSMC, which is located in Taiwan, is a large, state of the art semiconductor manufacturing company. Once Beijing annexes Taiwan, China will be all caught up to the state of the art in semiconductor fabrication in one fell swoop. The US may have to blow up TSMC just to keep Beijing from getting it, if it comes to that.
Simple Rules (Score:2)
Throw them in jail (Score:2)
Every one of the bastards who had any role in evading the blacklist should be thrown in jail without parole until they get their day in court. We know nothing much will happen to them afterward, so we might as well get the satisfaction of seeing the bastards at least spend a few months in stir. It would certainly thin out Congress a bit.
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Dear Mr Cluestick,
The system is that companies on a certain list have to get issued a license, also called a waiver, to buy various technology. Each purchase is reviewed to make sure they're not buying components that the US military doesn't want them to have, without publishing a list of exactly which products are considered most sensitive.
This story is about the number of waivers that were granted during a period of time that included both the Trump and Biden administrations.
Nothing was "evaded," you simp
Reuters reduced to clickbait (Score:2)
Considering the story and the discussion, my conclusion is the Subject.
Not worth more substantive comment, but I'll just note that I've never been convinced Huawei was substantially more evil than a LONG list of companies, most of them American. So far I'm not even convinced Huawei qualifies as a 'serious' corporate cancer.