US President Donald Trump just concluded a meeting at the White House with the chief executive officers of the country's top technology firms such as Google, Intel, and Broadcom.
Trump announced shortly after the meeting on Monday that he had agreed to the companies' request of a "timely" decision in regards to the issuance of licenses for the US companies to trade with Chinese telecommunications equipment giant Huawei.
Despite agreeing to the prompt issuance of licenses to trade with the trade blacklisted Chinese company, the White House made it very clear that there will still be some restrictions that will be put in place.
The White House mentioned in a statement to the press that they fully support Trump's decision but at the same time, they will be looking very closely at all the transactions of US firms to ensure that they do not pose any kind of national security threat.
Attending the meeting with Trump and other government officials were the CEOs of Cisco Systems, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Micron Technology, Western Digital, Intel, and Alphabet's Google. The meeting was held to address the issues US companies had with the Huawei trade ban and of the delays by the US Department of Commerce in issuing licenses to trade with the blacklisted company.
During the meeting, tech executives expressed their disappointment in the country's Commerce Department for not clearly providing guidelines regarding its renewed policies towards Huawei. Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross was present at the meeting, along with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
Reports citing sources that were present at the meeting revealed that the Commerce Department has agreed to accelerate its issuance of trade licenses. Further reports speculate that the department could approve licenses for US companies in the next few weeks.
As the trade dispute between China and the United States trickled down into the tech sector, the Trump administration announced in May that it would be placing Huawei on the country's blacklist. This essentially cut Huawei off from its US suppliers, which sold components and software necessary for its business. The trade ban had widespread repercussions throughout the tech industry, with US companies losing billions in sales.
Shortly after Trump had met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the sidelines of the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan last month, the Trump administration promises to ease restrictions on Huawei with the issuance of trade licenses to select companies. The move was seen as a forward step by the US in order to restart trade negotiations with China.
