US security agencies are divided over whether to place Honor, the smartphone maker spun off from Huawei, on the export blacklist, the Washington Post reports. It will be up to political leaders at the agencies to decide whether the Chinese company should face restrictions on doing business with US companies.
According to the Post's sources, career personnel at four agencies responsible for making such decisions split on whether to put Honor on the Commerce Department’s entity list. Huawei already features since 2019 on the list, which bars exports of US technology to the sanctioned firm without a department licence.
The staff couldn’t agree whether the business that Huawei sold last year posed a significant threat to US national security. Staff members at the Pentagon and Energy Department supported placing the company on the blacklist, while their counterparts at the Commerce Department and State Department opposed it, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The issue has been appealed to the political-appointee level at the four agencies, according to the sources. If they deadlock, the issue can be escalated to the Cabinet level. In the event of a tie there, US President Joe Biden would make the final decision.
In August, more than a dozen Republican lawmakers wrote to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo urging her to place Honor on the entity list, saying that Huawei’s sale of the unit amounted to "export control evasion".
