Biden nominee for key China export post expects Huawei to remain blacklisted

September 21, 2021

By Alexandra Alper and Karen Freifeld

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden’s nominee to a post overseeing export policy on China said on Tuesday he sees Chinese telecoms firm Huawei as a national security threat and expects to keep the company on a trade blacklist unless “things change.”

If confirmed as Under Secretary of Commerce for Industry And Security, former Pentagon official Alan Estevez also pledged to “look at” China’s Honor – a handset unit spun off of Huawei – to see whether the telecommunications company was using the spinoff brand to minimize or circumvent its own blacklist designation.

“I’ve seen previous maneuvers by the Chinese,” Estevez testified at a hearing of the Senate banking committee. “It’s something I’ll have to look at when I get to the department, should I be confirmed. I do not have the information in front of me that would give me the full picture on that.”

Neither Huawei nor Honor immediately responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Huawei said last November its consumer business was under tremendous pressure due to “a persistent unavailability of technical elements needed” for its mobile phone business and decided to sell its Honor assets as a result.

Huawei said it would not hold any shares or be involved in any business management or decision-making activities in the new Honor company.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper and Karen Freifeld, Editing by Chris Sanders, Sonya Hepinstall and Bill Berkrot)

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