The US President took a reconciliatory tone with Huawei on Thursday, expressing little appetite to sign in a ban on the Chinese telecoms company as Washington gears up for the final leg of trade negotiations with China, the Financial Times reports.
“I want the US to win through competition, not by blocking out currently more advanced technologies,” Trump wrote on Twitter. This goes against the grain of many of his closest advisers, who are pushing for the President to pen an executive order effectively banning all Huawei participation in US markets.
Experts believe that Trump will look to use Huawei as leverage in upcoming talks with Beijing, much as he appeared to do with ZTE in Spring of last year, when he lifted sanctions on the phonemaker at the China’s behest.
“Huawei would make a good bargaining chip – [Trump] can’t dismiss the indictments against the company, but he can control an executive order,” James Lewis, senior vice-president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the FT.
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