'No Reason to Believe' Huawei Will Be Removed From Entity List: Raimondo

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo suggested her agency has no plans to remove Huawei from the Entity List and said Wednesday she will aggressively use trade tools to compete with China. But she also said she will prioritize efforts to invest in U.S. technology industries over imposing more export restrictions. “My broad view is what we do on offense is more important than what we do on defense,” Raimondo told reporters. “To compete in the long run with China, we need to rebuild America in all of the ways we're talking about.” She said U.S. offensive tools include investments in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. But defensive tools may be necessary to address China’s “uncompetitive, coercive and underhanded” actions, she said, and Commerce will continue to maintain restrictions against Huawei. “A lot of people have said, is Huawei going to stay on the Entity List?” she said. “I have no reason to believe that they won't.” Commerce added seven Chinese supercomputing entities to the Entity List early Thursday, allegedly for activities that are contrary to U.S. “national security or foreign policy interests.” They were: Tianjin Phytium Information Technology, Shanghai High-Performance IC Design Center, Sunway Microelectronics, and Chinese national supercomputing centers in Jinan, Shenzhen, Wuxi and Zhengzhou. “These entities are involved with building supercomputers used by China’s military actors,” said Commerce. The Chinese Foreign Affairs Ministry didn’t comment.