Washington, United States:
A US judge on Friday ordered Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi temporarily removed from a government blacklist barring American investment in the enterprise.
Six days just before Donald Trump left workplace final year, his administration cemented its trade war legacy against Beijing with a series of announcements targeting Chinese firms which includes Xiaomi, state oil giant CNOOC, and social media darling TikTok.
Xiaomi was one of nine firms classified by the Pentagon as “Communist Chinese military companies.”
But US District Judge Rudolph Contreras in Washington ruled Friday the Departments of Defense and Treasury “have not made the case that the national security interests at stake here are compelling.”
He issued a preliminary injunction removing Xiaomi from the blacklist and suspending the ban on US investors acquiring the company’s securities.
In an appeal filed in January against its blacklisting, Xiaomi — which overtook Apple final year to turn into the world’s third-biggest smartphone manufacturer — stated Washington’s moves had been “incorrect” and had “deprived the company of legal due process.”
Contreras’s selection came the identical day US regulators listed Huawei and ZTE amongst Chinese telecom gear firms deemed a threat to national safety, signalling that a hoped-for softening of relations is not on the cards.
Huawei chief and founder Ren Zhengfei final month named for a reset with the United States below President Joe Biden, immediately after the firm was battered by sanctions imposed by Trump’s administration.
The telecoms giant has been at the center of the Sino-American rivalry in current years, against a backdrop of a trade and technologies war amongst the superpowers.
Washington claims Huawei has close ties to China’s military and that Beijing could use its gear for espionage — accusations the enterprise denies.
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