Huawei hits back at the US following trade ban extension

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Huawei's rotating chairman has hit back at the US government over its "relentless pursuit" of the embattled Chinese firm.

Guo Ping said that the government was ignoring the concerns of others within the tech industry.

The comments follow reports that Huawei's biggest chip supplier, TSMC, has ceased trading with the Chinese firm. The US government also recently extended its executive order, banning American companies from dealing with Huawei, for another year.

The reports have clearly struck a nerve with Guo, who didn't hold back with his retort.

"In its relentless pursuit to tighten its stranglehold on our company, the US government has decided to proceed and completely ignore the concerns of many companies and industry associations," he said.

"This decision was arbitrary and pernicious and threatens to undermine the entire industry worldwide. This new rule will impact the expansion, maintenance, and continuous operations of networks worth hundreds of billions of dollars that we have rolled out in more than 170 countries."

Huawei said it expected its business to be "inevitably affected" and said it would "try all it can" to seek a solution. The immediate issue the company will have to deal with is finding a new chip supplier if reports are correct. According to Nikkei the world's biggest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC) have halted new orders from Huawei.

"TSMC has stopped taking new orders from Huawei after the new rule change was announced to fully comply with the latest export control regulation," according to an unnamed source. "But those already in production and those orders which TSMC took before the new ban are not impacted and could continue to proceed if those chips could be shipped before mid-September."

Huawei has argued that the government's sanctions aren't just going to affect the Chinese firm but will have a "serious impact on a wide number of global industries", and eventually, the US itself.

"In the long run, this will damage the trust and collaboration within the global semiconductor industry which many industries depend on, increasing conflict and loss within these industries," Huawei said in a statement.

"The US is leveraging its own technological strengths to crush companies outside its own borders. This will only serve to undermine the trust international companies place in US technology and supply chains. Ultimately, this will harm US interests."

Bobby Hellard

Bobby Hellard is ITPro's Reviews Editor and has worked on CloudPro and ChannelPro since 2018. In his time at ITPro, Bobby has covered stories for all the major technology companies, such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook, and regularly attends industry-leading events such as AWS Re:Invent and Google Cloud Next.

Bobby mainly covers hardware reviews, but you will also recognize him as the face of many of our video reviews of laptops and smartphones.