Report on Supply Chain Compliance 3, no. 4 (February 20, 2020)
The United States continues to try to sideline China’s Huawei Technologies Co. from future telecommunications networks, even as some traditional allies defy U.S. calls for a boycott. The White House seeks to build a road map that would have much of the next generation of telecommunications infrastructure built and sold by American companies, or companies with strong ties to the U.S., such as Nokia Corp. and Ericsson AB. The plan is to create a group of companies, including Microsoft and Dell, that would compete under an umbrella that allows them to share software and innovation with each other.[1]
Even if the plan does work, Western companies still lag far behind Huawei. At the same time, the United Kingdom recently agreed to allow Huawei to build parts of their 5G infrastructure, and the U.S. Department of Defense successfully argued that U.S. companies should still be able to sell nonsensitive equipment to Huawei, despite the fact that the company is on a Department of Commerce blacklist.