February 1, 2023: The Biden administration has stopped approving authorisations for U.S. companies to export over items to China’s Huawei, the three people familiar with the subject states.

Huawei has faced U.S. export restrictions over items for 5G and other technologies for many years. Still, U.S. Department of Commerce officials have granted licenses for some American firms to sell specific goods and technologies to the establishment. Qualcomm 2020 received permission to sell 4G smartphone chips to Huawei.

Bloomberg and the Financial Times earlier stated the move. A Commerce Department spokesperson stated that officials “continually assess our policies and regulations” but did not state on talks with a specific firm. Huawei and Qualcomm declined to comment.

One person familiar with the matter stated U.S. officials are creating a recent formal policy of denial that ships items to Huawei that would include items below the 5G level, which includes 4G items, Wi-Fi 6 and 7, artificial brains, and high-performance computing and cloud items.

Another person stated that the move was anticipated to reflect the Biden administration’s tightening policy on Huawei over the past year. The person said that appointments for 4G chips that could not be used for 5G, having been approved, were being denied. Toward the end of the Trump government and early in the Biden government, officials still provided licenses for items specific to 4G applications.

American officials placed Huawei on a trade blocklist in 2019, restricting most U.S. suppliers from starting goods and technology to the firm unless they were granted licenses. Officials keep tightening the controls, cutting off Huawei’s ability to buy or make the semiconductor chips that power most of its products.

But U.S. officials give licenses that authorised Huawei to receive some products. For instance, suppliers to Huawei got charges worth $61 billion to sell to the telecom equipment giant from April through November 2021.

In December, Huawei said its overall earnings were about $91.53 billion, down only from 2021, when U.S. sanctions caused its sales to decrease by nearly a third.