The US said it would grant licenses to American companies that want to sell products to Huawei as long as the sales wouldn’t put national security at risk, the Wall Street Journal reports. The announcement was made by Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, expanding on a pledge made last month by President Donald Trump to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Huawei will remain on the Commerce Department’s entity list, Ross said. This means US companies wanting to sell to Huawei must still apply for a licence from the department. The department will continue to review such licenses with a "presumption of denial", he said.
Ross said the agency would issue licenses for US companies to sell to Huawei "where there is no threat to US national security". He added that "within those confines we will try to make sure that we don’t just transfer revenue from the US to foreign firms".
Trump had agreed to grant the exemptions in talks with Xi at the G20 meeting in Japan. China had demanded the US ease up on Huawei as a condition for resuming talks on US-China trade conditions.
