Huawei sees partial reprieve from US trade ban

Recently, Huawei had been slapped with a trade ban by the US Administration. It prevented this electronics OEM from buying equipment, services or other products (e.g. the use or application of intellectual property) from other companies in the same industry based in or associated with the US. As this included many companies involved in crucial areas of device development or production, this had a considerable effect on Huawei, particularly in terms of potential growth and inventory going forward.

However, as even Qualcomm and Intel have argued, this also has the negative impact of losing Huawei as a customer. The US authorities must have been listening, as concessions have just been made in their original measure against the globally-successful firm. Today (June 29, 2019) has seen a ceasefire between the US and China in their ongoing trade war. A part of this agreement concerns Huawei's ability to buy from certain suppliers again.

The US president, speaking at the G20 summit in Osaka, has stated that "U.S. companies can sell their equipment to Huawei". However, there is a caveat to this agreement, specifically that the company can now only buy products "where there’s no great national security problem with it." What could be encompassed within this potentially nebulous category of commodities remains less than clear to date.