The US has formally removed the Chinese electronics company Xiaomi from its trading blacklist.
The US District Court for the District of Columbia issued a final order on 25th May that vacated the Department of Defense’s designation of Xiaomi as a “Communist Chinese military company” (CCMC), which would have prohibited Americans from investing in the Chinese consumer tech giant.
“The Company is grateful for the trust and support of its global users, partners, employees and shareholders,” a Xiaomi spokesperson says in a statement. “The Company reiterates that it is an open, transparent, publicly traded, independently operated and managed corporation. The Company will continue to provide reliable consumer electronics products and services to users, and to relentlessly build amazing products with honest prices to let everyone in the world enjoy a better life through innovative technology.”
The US issued the CCMC designation on January 14th, in the final week of the former President Donald Trump’s administration. Xiaomi sued the government the following month, and in March won a preliminary injunction blocking the designation, with a judge describing the blacklisting as “arbitrary and capricious.”
Earlier this month Xiaomi and the United States Department of Defense (DoD) announced that they’d come to an agreement to resolve the matter among themselves.
Will sanctions continue?
While Xiaomi, the largest Chinese smartphone brand globally, has managed to get out of its tangle with the US government, the new Biden administration hasn’t given any indication that Trump’s sanctions targeting Huawei, another tech company from China, will be lifted.
Huawei’s consumer division has been crippled by the resulting inability to do business with companies based in the US, but the company also makes network equipment that several politicians have accused of posing a national security threat.
In its latest attempt to overcome the damage done by the US sanctions, Huawei recently announced its decision to make its own operating system (OS) available as early as June 2nd. The company’s founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei also reportedly sent an internal memo to staff last week saying that Huawei should pivot to software as a way to get around US sanctions.
