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Trump reverses stance, does not want to discuss HUAWEI in China negotiations
At a press conference today, United States President Donald Trump said that Huawei would not be a part of the discussions with China over the ongoing U.S. trade war (via Reuters).
This is an apparent reversal, as Trump had previously said that he would be open to factoring in HUAWEI when discussing a resolution to the trade war. If Trump now refuses to even discuss HUAWEI, that means more bad news for the Chinese telecom giant.
“It’s a national security concern,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “HUAWEI is a big concern of our military, of our intelligence agencies, and we are not doing business with HUAWEI … We’ll see what happens with respect to China, but HUAWEI has been not a player that we want to discuss, (that) we want to talk about right now.”
The “we are not doing business with HUAWEI” line is one that Trump has used before. The first time we heard him say it was also surprising, as he had previously declared he was open to making deals related to HUAWEI, China, and the trade war.
If the president won’t even discuss HUAWEI, it’s a good bet the company’s presence on the U.S. government’s Entity List won’t be changing any time soon. This means that HUAWEI will likely be barred from working with U.S.-based firms — including Google, Arm, Qualcomm, and many more — for an indefinite period of time.
It is unclear for now how the President’s recent statements will affect the rollout of the upcoming HUAWEI Mate 30 series or future HUAWEI smartphones in general. The Mate 30 and Mate 30 Pro are due to land on September 19, just two weeks from now.