Trump expected to ban Chinese tech firms from U.S. networks
The Trump administration is poised to issue this week an executive order to secure American telecommunications networks, a move that’s likely to result in barring Chinese tech firms such as Huawei, according to three U.S. officials.
The order, which U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to sign by Friday, would give the commerce secretary broad powers to stop American companies from doing business with foreign suppliers.
In development for more than a year, it will lay out the administration’s concern that foreign-owned or controlled suppliers of equipment and services could compromise the security of the United States’ phone and Internet infrastructure.
The pending announcement comes as U.S. officials continue to press their case with allies and foreign countries that companies such as Huawei, which has close ties to the Chinese government, pose considerable risk to burgeoning high-speed telecom networks – what’s known as 5G.
Officials cautioned that last-minute snags could delay the new order, which has been anticipated since last summer. But they stressed that any holdups are not related to ongoing, high-level trade talks between Washington and Beijing aimed at ending the two countries’ months-long trade war.
“This is a national security issue, not a trade issue,” said one U.S. official, who like two others interviewed for the story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
“We’re not doing this to increase the leverage (with China). This is on a separate track.”
The White House and Commerce Department declined to comment. Huawei did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The order, whose existence in draft form was first reported by The Washington Post in June, will not ban specific companies or countries, officials said. But the regulations that result from the order, depending on how they are written, may have an outsize impact on China and Chinese-made technology, which U.S. officials have come to view with increasing alarm.
“This is crossing the Rubicon – asserting government power to block commercial transactions,” said Clete Johnson, a former senior cybersecurity adviser at the Commerce Department and now a partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer. “Just the authority itself could have enormous long-term implications in the U.S. and global markets, and in U.S.-China relations.”
U.S. security officials have long voiced concerns about foreign risks to the nation’s telecom networks, especially as advanced technologies have introduced vulnerabilities that make such systems more attractive targets for espionage and sabotage.
China in particular has raised concern as it is the United States’ near peer in cyber prowess and its top competitor in the race for global technological dominance. The Trump administration, building on its predecessor’s actions, has become increasingly vocal in calling out Beijing for what officials describe as a long-running campaign of economic espionage and of forced technology transfers. It has brought criminal indictments against statesponsored hackers and publicly labeled China an economic predator that seeks to unfairly obtain advanced American technology.
Also troubling to U.S. officials is a 2017 law requiring Chinese firms to cooperate with Chinese intelligence services.
Major telecom companies such as AT&T and Verizon already bar Huawei equipment from their core networks, a response to concerns raised years ago by U.S. intelligence agencies. But officials say that issuing the executive order now is a way to show the world that the United States is leading by example, taking decisive measures to protect the telecom supply chain.
“People look to the United States to see what kind of model we’re following,” the official said. “It’s important for the rest of the world to see that we’re doing this in a transparent way, using this as part of regulation.”