President Trump’s administration has unveiled a regulation to deprive Huawei of U.S. technology as one part of a “three-legged stool” that U.S. officials could use to bludgeon China’s flagship tech giant.
“Buckle up. Game on,” the Heritage Foundation’s James Carafano told the Washington Examiner. “The range of options in terms of the internet are on the table, including some kind of decoupling of infrastructure, digital infrastructure.”
Trump’s team revealed the regulatory amendment, which promises to restrict Huawei’s ability to buy products designed by U.S. companies.
Trump aides reveled in the second leg of the stool, a Taiwanese electronic chip manufacturer’s decision to make a $12 billion investment in Arizona. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is a key supplier for Huawei, raising the possibility that it is in the process of severing its link with the Chinese telecommunications company.
“It’s not surprising … that the United States would be an attractive location for companies to come to and take advantage of all that we have in this country to offer and at the same time that we would need to be careful about making sure that others did not exploit and try to gain inappropriate access to our technology moving forward,” Christopher Ford, the State Department’s assistant secretary for international security and nonproliferation, told reporters on Friday.
Huawei has held a place near the center of U.S.-China relations in recent years, as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other U.S. officials have warned that the company’s offer of 5G wireless technology to U.S. allies is little more than a Trojan horse for Beijing’s spy services.
“We urge our allies and our partners to join us in aligning their domestic export-control laws to address the very real security threat posed by Huawei and the PRC,” Keith Krach, the State Department’s undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, said. “Huawei is a PRC state-supported firm serving as a tool for the Chinese Communist Party. The United States will continue to restrict most exports to Huawei.”
That effort has given rise to the “5G Clean Path” initiative, which stipulates that the U.S. government will not send or receive data over fifth-generation wireless technology networks if that data ever passes through Chinese telecommunications infrastructure. The initiative would apply in particular to U.S. embassies abroad, making it more difficult for countries that use Huawei to communicate with U.S. diplomats.
“So, just to sum it up, each of these initiatives form a three-legged stool of trust, security, and resilience for the United States,” Krach said. “Each reinforces the others and greatly augments U.S. national and economic security, especially as we’re facing increasing competition from the PRC.”
Huawei developed into a national security threat in the eyes of U.S. officials with the advent of 5G technology, as the pioneering, state-backed company seeks to build communications infrastructure around the world. Pompeo’s attempt to dissuade Western allies from forming such a partnership has struggled in the face of the Beijing-backed company’s low prices and the economic advantages that could come to countries that win the race to roll out 5G networks.
“I think, in so many different ways, COVID has just dumped steroids into the whole issue,” Carafano said, noting that the pandemic has heightened Western distrust of China but also intensified the need for economic relief, which a cheaper 5G system could provide. “It’s like trying to handicap a race where every horse is Seabiscuit. There are so many countervailing trends all happening simultaneously [that] it’s hard to see who’s got the advantage here.”
Despite the three-pronged strategy, Trump has a history of easing the pressure applied to China’s telecommunications companies in the context of trade disputes. The Commerce Department has repeatedly waived a restriction analogous to the regulation over the last year, even as Huawei took fire from various members of Trump’s administration.
“No restrictions have actually been applied,” the American Enterprise Institute’s Derek Scissors wrote on Monday. “Full enforcement will not occur until 120 days from the finalized rule, which we don’t yet have.”
