The United States on Wednesday extended a ban on domestic telecommunications companies from using certain equipment and moved a federal employees’ fund away from investing in Chinese stocks, in an ongoing effort to decouple the country’s economy and technology from China, reported the South China Morning Post.
President Donald Trump has added another year to an executive order signed last May that prohibited US companies from using telecoms equipment made by firms deemed a national security threat – a ban that includes Chinese giants Huawei Technologies and ZTE.
Meanwhile, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, the entity that manages the US federal employees’ retirement fund, announced that it halted the transition of the I Fund benchmark to the MSCI All Country World ex US Investible Market Index, which includes stocks of Chinese companies.