Tech war: US revokes 8 licenses for exporting goods to China’s Huawei in 2024

The Commerce Department, which is responsible for US export policy, announced in May that it had revoked “certain” licenses, as Reuters first reported. However, it did not name or specify the number of suppliers affected. According to Reuters, the revoked licenses also included licenses for Qualcomm and Intel.

“Since the beginning of 2024, (the Department of Commerce) has revoked eight additional licenses related to Huawei,” the agency said in the document, which was prepared in response to a request from Republican Congressman Michael McCaul.

According to the document, the Ministry of Commerce said Huawei’s license approvals include “training equipment and office furniture, as well as low-tech components for mass-market items such as touchpads and touchscreen sensors for tablets,” which are widely available in China from Chinese and foreign sources.

Huawei and Qualcomm did not respond to requests for comment. Intel declined to comment. A spokesman for the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which McCaul chairs, said they received the data on Tuesday and are currently reviewing it.

The details shed new light on the Biden administration’s actions to hamper Huawei, which has begun to recover despite Washington’s efforts to cripple it on national security grounds. Huawei has denied that it poses a security risk.

Huawei was placed on a U.S. trade restrictions list in 2019 over concerns that the company might spy on Americans. Being on the list means the company’s suppliers must apply for a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping.

But Huawei suppliers have received billions of dollars worth of licenses to sell the company’s goods and technology, thanks to a Trump administration policy that allowed a far greater volume of goods to flow to the company than is typical for publicly traded companies.

The summary also states that the agency approved $335 billion worth of licenses between 2018 and 2023. In total, $880 billion worth of applications were submitted seeking permission to sell to Chinese parties on the Entity List.

Of those approvals, $222 billion were issued in 2021, Biden’s first year in office, with $560 billion worth of applications received this year, the agency added.