A measure that would blacklist the Chinese technology giant Huawei Technologies Ltd. as well as other Chinese 5G businesses and prevent them from using financial institutions in the United States has been presented by legislators in the United States.
This legislation, which was proposed by Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican, and supported by Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat and the Majority Leader of the Senate, seeks to “severely sanction” Huawei and other “untrustworthy” Chinese 5G producers who, according to the lawmakers, engage in economic espionage against the United States.
This legislation would add these entities to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) List maintained by the Treasury Department, which will essentially lock them out of the United States financial system.
The request for a comment from Reuters was not met with an instant response from Huawei.
In the past, members of Congress have considered legislation to restrict Huawei’s access to financial institutions in the United States. One such measure was introduced in the year 2020, while President Donald Trump was still in office.
Cotton said in a statement on Tuesday that “we’ve made great strides in recent years at home and abroad in combating Huawei’s malign attempts to dominate 5G and steal Americans’ data.” Cotton’s comments came in response to a report that Huawei had stolen a large amount of user data in the United States.
“We cannot enable Huawei and the Chinese Communist Party to have access to the personal data of Americans or our nation’s most sensitive military systems,” he said. “This is unacceptable.”
In October, prosecutors in the United States of America indicted two Chinese intelligence officers with attempting to interfere with the probe against Huawei. According to the prosecution, the two Chinese nationals had sought to recruit a law enforcement agent from the United States to operate as their spy, but the agent they were trying to recruit was really operating as an agent for the United States.
The regulations that prohibit the purchase of new telecommunications equipment from Huawei were approved by the Federal Communications Commission of the United States last month.
