After months of tension, US may soon allow the American companies to resume trade with Huawei Technologies Co, a media report has said. According to a report in Bloomberg, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that licenses would be coming ‘very shortly’ for the US-based companies to sell components to the Chinese conglomerate. This is a part of the ‘Phase One’ of the US-China trade deal, which could be signed somewhere in the US.
Ross was speaking after US President Donald Trump addressed the reporters at the White House about the trade agreement. The Commerce Secretary said that Iowa, Alaska, Hawaii, and locations in China were all possible places for Trump and Xi Jinping to sign the deal. This comes on the heels of the cancellation of this month’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Chile.
According to the deal, China would increase purchases of US agriculture products and open financial services markets to American firms. In return, Beijing wants the North American country to do away with new import taxes due to take effect from December 15 on goods, including smartphones. For those unaware, the Trump Administration had put several Chinese firms, including Huawei on the Commerce Department’s ‘entity list.’ This meant that American countries were not allowed to do business with any company in the entity list.
Later, the US government relaxed the ban and said that the US companies will have to get a license to do business with the Chinese firm. It was reported that some of these US companies maintained relationships with banned companies through their international subsidiaries. Ross claims that the licenses that will allow American companies to resume business 'will be forthcoming very shortly’ and noted that the government has received 260 license requests.
