Biden Admin Revoked 8 Licenses Involving Huawei in 2024

A customer speaks with a clerk as he picks up a new Mate 60 smartphone at a Huawei flagship store after the company unveiled new products in Beijing, China, on Sept. 25, 2023. Kevin Frayer/Getty Images

The Biden administration revoked eight licenses involving Chinese technology giant Huawei this year as the company faces further scrutiny from U.S. lawmakers, a document from the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) shows.

The BIS report released July 2 was prepared in response to last year’s inquiry by Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

In 2019, Huawei and its 68 affiliates were added to the Department of Commerce’s entity list or trade restriction list as part of Washington’s effort to prevent Chinese firms from using U.S. technology to undermine national security or foreign policy interests.

Being on the entity list means that Huawei’s suppliers must seek license approval from the U.S. government before they can provide components and technology to Huawei. This measure is intended to restrict Huawei’s access to critical U.S. technologies and ensure that American innovations are not used to compromise security or policy objectives.

The BIS document said license approvals related to Huawei included “exercise equipment and office furniture and low-technology components for consumer mass-market items, such as touchpad and touchscreen sensors for tablets, which are widely available to [China] entities from Chinese and other foreign sources.”

Last year, Huawei released a new smartphone featuring an advanced 7-nanometer chip with 5G connectivity capabilities, produced by the Chinese company Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), despite existing sanctions on both companies. The phone helped Huawei’s smartphone sales spike by 64 percent year-on-year in the first six weeks of 2024, according to research firm Counterpoint.

In response to the discovery of the new chip in the Huawei phone, Mr. McCaul requested answers from BIS, urging actions against Huawei and SMIC and suggesting that this may violate U.S. export control rules. “Due to the ubiquity of U.S. origin technology throughout the semiconductor supply chain, these reports suggest a violation of U.S. export control regulations,” Mr. McCaul said in a letter to BIS Under Secretary Alan Estevez in September 2023.

Then-chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also called for ending all technology exports to the two companies.

“This chip likely could not be produced without U.S. technology and thus SMIC may have violated the Department of Commerce’s Foreign Direct Product Rule,” Mr. Gallagher said at the time. “The time has come to end all U.S. technology exports to both Huawei and SMIC to make clear any firm that flouts U.S. law and undermines our national security will be cut off from our technology.”

Mr. Gallagher and Mr. McCaul later urged the BIS to strengthen the enforcement of export controls on sending advanced computing chips and the machinery required for their production to China.

Huawei and SMIC are also on the Defense Department’s blacklist, which targets companies tied to the Chinese communist regime’s military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The BIS document shows that the bureau has significantly increased its restrictions on Chinese entities over the past six years, tripling the number of entities on the entity list from 218 in 2018 to 787 by the end of 2023.

The document also shows that nearly 1,300 licensing applications involving Chinese companies on the trade restriction list, seeking to use U.S. technologies or equipment, were denied, revoked, or returned without action by federal agencies from 2018 to 2023.

In October 2022, the United States imposed sweeping export controls on chipmaking equipment to China. The measures aim to contain the Chinese communist regime’s ambition to strengthen its military with cutting-edge technology.

Last year, the Commerce Department updated its restrictions on semiconductor exports to China. The new rules place additional limits on the types of advanced semiconductors that U.S. firms can sell to China, which the documents refer to as an “adversary” of the United States.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Huawei for comment.

Reuters contributed to this report.