US President Donald Trump on Wednesday extended for another year an executive order signed in May last year declaring a national emergency and barring US companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms posing a national security risk.
The order invoked the US International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president the authority to regulate commerce in response to a national emergency.
US lawmakers said that Trump’s order last year was aimed squarely at Chinese companies such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) and ZTE Corp (中興).
Photo: AP
The US Department of Commerce is expected to extend again a license, set to expire today, allowing US companies to keep doing business with Huawei, a person briefed on the matter said.
The department has issued a series of extensions of the temporary license and previously extended it until April 1.
Huawei, the second-largest maker of smartphones, is also a major telecoms equipment company that provides 5G network technology.
In March, the department sought public comments on whether it should issue future extensions and asked what was the “impact on your company or organization if the temporary general license is not extended?”
It also asked about the costs associated with ending the licenses.
Wireless trade association CTIA urged the department to approve a “long-term” license extension, writing that “now is not the time to hamper global operators’ ability to maintain the health of the networks.”
The association said that “ongoing, limited engagement with Huawei to protect the security of equipment and devices in the market benefits American consumers by reducing the risk that they will be subject to device compromise.”
It also asked the department to “reinstate and modify its prior authorization for standards development work to allow for exchanges with Huawei in furtherance of global telecommunications standards.”
The commerce department and Huawei declined to comment.
Since adding Huawei to an economic blacklist in May last year, citing national security concerns, the department has allowed it to purchase some US-made goods in a move aimed at minimizing disruption for its customers, many of which operate wireless networks in rural areas of the US.
In November last year, the US Federal Communications Commission designated Huawei and ZTE as national security risks, effectively barring their rural customers in the US from tapping an US$8.5 billion government fund to purchase equipment.
SEMICONDUCTOR SERVICES: A company executive said that Taiwanese firms must think about how to participate in global supply chains and lift their competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday said it expects to launch its first multifunctional service center in Pingtung County in the middle of 2027, in a bid to foster a resilient high-tech facility construction ecosystem. TSMC broached the idea of creating a center two or three years ago when it started building new manufacturing capacity in the US and Japan, the company said. The center, dubbed an “ecosystem park,” would assist local manufacturing facility construction partners to upgrade their capabilities and secure more deals from other global chipmakers such as Intel Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Infineon Technologies AG, TSMC said. It
EXPORT GROWTH: The AI boom has shortened chip cycles to just one year, putting pressure on chipmakers to accelerate development and expand packaging capacity Developing a localized supply chain for advanced packaging equipment is critical for keeping pace with customers’ increasingly shrinking time-to-market cycles for new artificial intelligence (AI) chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) said yesterday. Spurred on by the AI revolution, customers are accelerating product upgrades to nearly every year, compared with the two to three-year development cadence in the past, TSMC vice president of advanced packaging technology and service Jun He (何軍) said at a 3D IC Global Summit organized by SEMI in Taipei. These shortened cycles put heavy pressure on chipmakers, as the entire process — from chip design to mass
People walk past advertising for a Syensqo chip at the Semicon Taiwan exhibition in Taipei yesterday.
NO BREAKTHROUGH? More substantial ‘deliverables,’ such as tariff reductions, would likely be saved for a meeting between Trump and Xi later this year, a trade expert said China launched two probes targeting the US semiconductor sector on Saturday ahead of talks between the two nations in Spain this week on trade, national security and the ownership of social media platform TikTok. China’s Ministry of Commerce announced an anti-dumping investigation into certain analog integrated circuits (ICs) imported from the US. The investigation is to target some commodity interface ICs and gate driver ICs, which are commonly made by US companies such as Texas Instruments Inc and ON Semiconductor Corp. The ministry also announced an anti-discrimination probe into US measures against China’s chip sector. US measures such as export curbs and tariffs
RSS