Top Senate Commerce Republican Seeking Huawei Licensing Stats From BIS
Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, is asking the Bureau of Industry and Security for information on Huawei export licenses. Wicker said BIS recently held an “informal briefing” with Wicker’s staff in which they withheld certain licensing information “based on confidentiality concerns,” but Wicker believes the information should have been provided. “The information requested neither focused on any particular company's compliance nor could have resulted in a breach of confidentiality for a company under investigation,” the senator said in an Aug. 11 letter to BIS.
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Wicker said he wants answers to three questions relating to an August 2020 final rule that further restricted Huawei’s access to foreign-made technology containing a certain level of U.S.-origin components (see 2008170029). Wicker is seeking information on the number of companies that have sought licenses to ship to Huawei under the rule, the number of applications that have been processed and granted and the number of denied applications. Wicker asked for answers by Aug. 16. “Huawei poses a serious threat to American national security interests,” he said, “and I encourage BIS to take decisive and swift action against any company found to be circumventing this rule.”
A Commerce Department spokesperson said that BIS “continues to work with our interagency partners to apply consistently the licensing policies” in the Export Administration Regulations “to restrict Huawei’s access to technology or software for activities that could harm U.S. national security and foreign policy interests.” The spokesperson added that Huawei has “reported a revenue decrease of almost 30% for the first half of 2021” compared with the same period last year, suggesting BIS’s restrictions are working. “BIS aggressively enforces the Export Administration Regulations and takes allegations of potential export control violations seriously,” the spokesperson said. “All sources of information are leveraged to identify, investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute violations.”