President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the United States does not want to discuss the blacklisting of Huawei Technologies with China as the two biggest world economies try to end escalating trade tensions.
“It’s a national security concern,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “Huawei is a big concern of our military, of our intelligence agencies, and we are not doing business with Huawei.
“And we’ll see what happens with respect to China, but Huawei has been not a player that we want to discuss, (that) we want to talk about right now.”
It was unclear whether Trump’s comments indicated a change on whether he would be open to discussing the Chinese tech giant in trade talks with Beijing.
The US president in the past has said he would be open to including Huawei in talks to reach a trade deal with Beijing. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping this summer agreed the US would ease restrictions on Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and China would make unspecified purchases of US farm products.
The US placed Huawei on the Commerce Departments so-called Entity List in May over national security concerns. US parts and components generally cannot be sold to those on the list without special licenses.