There's been a lot of speculation lately about big of an effect the trade ban put onto Huawei by President Trump would have on the company, but now it looks like Huawei is getting a reprieve.
Trump announced today that he's easing up on the ban that prevents Huawei from buying components from U.S. companies. He and Chinese President Xi Jinping came to an agreement during a meeting at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan. "U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei," said Trump. "We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it."
However, Trump said that he hasn't yet decided how U.S. companies will be allowed to resume selling to Huawei. He also hasn't decided whether or not Huawei will be formally removed from the U.S. Department of Commerce's entity list that prevents U.S. companies from selling their components to Huawei.
Huawei was placed on the entity list last month, and in the following weeks several major U.S. companies stopped doing business with Huawei, including Intel, Qualcomm, and ARM. Huawei was also set to lose Google, which meant new Huawei devices wouldn't have access to Google apps like Gmail and the Play Store, and software updates could also be affected. A temporary general license was eventually granted to Huawei so that it could continue to maintain existing networks and provide devices with software updates.
While Huawei isn't completely out of the woods yet since it's still on the entity list, today's news is big for the company and indicates that it could soon have the trade ban against it lifted.
