The action - likely the last against Huawei under Republican
President Donald Trump - is the latest in a long-running effort to weaken the
world's largest telecommunications equipment maker, which Washington sees as a
national security threat.
The notices came amid a flurry of US efforts against China
in the final days of Trump's administration. Democrat Joe Biden will take the
oath of office as president on Wednesday.
Huawei and Intel declined to comment. Commerce said it could
not comment on specific licensing decisions, but said the department continues
to work with other agencies to "consistently" apply licensing
policies in a way that "protects US national security and foreign policy
interests."
In an email seen by Reuters documenting the actions, the
Semiconductor Industry Association said on Friday the Commerce Department had
issued "intents to deny a significant number of license requests for
exports to Huawei and a revocation of at least one previously issued
license." Sources familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said there was more than one revocation. One of the sources said
eight licenses were yanked from four companies.
The news triggered moderate profit-taking in some
semiconductor related shares in Asia. Korea's Samsung Electronics fell 1.5
percent while Japan's Advantest shed 1.5 percent and Tokyo Electron lost 0.8
percent.
Japanese flash memory chip maker Kioxia had at least one
license revoked, two of the sources said. The company, formerly known as
Toshiba Memory, said it does not "disclose business details regarding
specific products or customers."
The semiconductor association's email said the actions
spanned a "broad range" of products in the semiconductor industry and
asked companies whether they had received notices.
The email noted that companies had been waiting "many
months" for licensing decisions, and with less than a week left in the
administration, dealing with the denials was a challenge.
A spokesman for the semiconductor group did not respond to a
request for comment.
Companies that received the "intent to deny"
notices have 20 days to respond, and the Commerce Department has 45 days to
advise them of any change in a decision or it becomes final. Companies would
then have another 45 days to appeal.
The United States put Huawei on a Commerce Department
"entity list" in May 2019, restricting suppliers from selling US
goods and technology to it.
But some sales were allowed and others denied while the
United States intensified its crackdown on the company, in part by expanding US
authority to require licenses for sales of semiconductors made abroad with
American technology.
Before the latest action, some 150 licenses were pending for
$120 billion worth of goods and technology, which had been held up because
various US agencies could not agree on whether they should be granted, a person
familiar with the matter said.
Another $280 billion of license applications for goods and
technology for Huawei still have not been processed, the source said, but now
are more likely to be denied.
Intel has received licences from US authorities to continue
supplying certain products to Huawei, an Intel spokesman said in September last
year.
An August rule said that products with 5G capabilities were
likely to be rejected, but sales of less sophisticated technology would be
decided on a case-by-case basis.
The United States made the latest decisions during a half
dozen meetings starting on January 4 with senior officials from the departments
of Commerce, State, Defense, and Energy, the source said. The officials
developed detailed guidance with regard to which technologies were capable of
5G, and then applied that standard, the person added.
That meant issuing denials for the vast majority of the
roughly 150 disputed applications, and revoking the eight licenses to make
those consistent with the latest denials, the source said.
The US action came after pressure from a recent Trump
appointee in the Commerce Department, Corey Stewart, who wanted to push through
hardline China policies after being hired for a two-month stint in the agency
at the end of the administration.
Trump has targeted Huawei in other ways. Meng Wanzhou,
Huawei's chief financial officer, was arrested in Canada in December 2018, on a
US warrant. Meng, the daughter of Huawei's founder, and the company itself were
indicted for misleading banks about its business in Iran.
Meng has said she is innocent. Huawei has denied the claims
of spying and pleaded not guilty to the indictment, which also includes charges
of violating US sanctions against Iran and conspiring to steal trade secrets
from American technology companies.
© Reuters