Ah, Huawei.
You either love to hate them or hate to love them. The Chinese tech giant has dished out some stellar products this year. As such, it was on course for an exceptional year, only for some orange dude, who looks like Conan O’Brien upside down, to shove a wedge in the gears that is the Huawei machine.
The bane of Huawei’s existence for the last 6 months has been the U.S Commerce Department’s de facto blacklisting of the company. We’ve gone on in detail about the ban in the past but if we’re being honest, it’s lasted a lot longer than we originally thought it would.
Children tend to make impulse decisions when they don’t get what they want, which is why we figured Donald Trump would eventually come to his senses and make a U-turn. However, that brief moment after G-20 aside, the ban still stands and we’re now entering its sixth month. That being said, we have what looks like a concrete update.
The current landscape of things is starting to suggest that sanctions will be loosened soon.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross expressed optimism that a deal with China, which will come with licenses allowing US companies to deal with Huawei, would be struck sooner rather than later. In fact, his exact words were “Very shortly”, which to me, implies before the month ends.
He also disclosed that there have been 260 requests for licenses but while he admitted that it’s “more than we would’ve thought”, he cautioned against assuming that the US government would rubber stamp them. To be fair though, with Trump as president, everything comes with a disclaimer.
Among the 260 requests is sure to be Google, who are probably the one American company that is most affected by the trade ban. As we saw with the Mate 30 series, Google are unable to provide it’s services for new Huawei devices and the temporary license currently being used that allows the company to update existing phones is well, temporary. You can bet your house that Google is watching this closely.
The writing has been on the wall for months now.
Remember the G20 summit in Japan back in June? Trump said that he’d “easily” agreed to allow American firms to continue certain exports to Huawei. He then followed that up by saying he would accelerate the approval process for licenses. It’s November and we’ve still not heard a peep.
Normally, we’d be skeptical but with the president apparently having given the green light for approval in a meeting with advisers earlier this month, we’re fairly certain an announcement is coming soon.
Who are we kidding?
Donald Trump’s at the wheel, and no one is certain of anything. Not even the man himself.
