Trump may blacklist Chinese surveillance tech firm: Report

US President Donald Trump’s administration is considering blacklisting a Chinese video surveillance giants from buying American technology, in a latest attempt to counter Beijings global economic ambitions, a media report said.

The move would effectively place the company, Hikvision, on a US blacklist. It would mark the first time the Trump administration punished a Chinese company for its role in the surveillance and mass detention of the Uyghur Muslim ethnic minority, informed sources told The New York Times on Tuesday.

The development is also likely to inflame the tensions that have escalated in President Trump’s renewed trade war with Chinese leaders.

Trump, in the span of two weeks, has raised tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, threatened to tax all imports and taken steps to cripple the Chinese telecom equipment giant Huawei.