Huawei, SMIC suppliers received billions worth of licenses for US goods: Documents

Suppliers to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and China’s top chipmaker SMIC got billions of dollars worth of licenses from November through April to sell them goods and technology despite their being on a US trade blacklist, documents released by Congress showed on Thursday.

According to the documents, first obtained by Reuters, 113 export licenses worth $61 billion were approved for suppliers to ship products to Huawei while another 188 licenses valued at nearly $42 billion were greenlighted for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).

The data also showed that more than 9 out of 10 license applications were granted to SMIC suppliers while 69 per cent of requests to ship to Huawei were approved over the same period.