China is pulling back on demands that national security issues be included in trade talks, suggesting that the status of Chinese telecom company Huawei, which the U.S. has called a national security threat and placed on a blacklist, won’t be a factor in the talks.

Gary Hufbauer, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute, said there was a general consensus at a recent Beijing forum hosted by the China Development Reform Foundation he attended that the Huawei issue had caused the talks with the U.S. to run aground. The foundation hosts officials from Beijing as well as economists and trade policy experts at events.