Suppliers to two blacklisted Chinese companies—telecom giant Huawei and China’s top chipmaker SMIC—were approved to receive billions of dollars worth of licenses for U.S. technologies shipments between November and April, documents released by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Oct. 21 detail.
Some 301 licenses worth a total of $103 billion were approved for suppliers to sell goods to Huawei and SMIC, according to the documents prepared by the Commerce Department.
Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) were put on a U.S. trade blacklist, known as the “entity list,” in May 2019 and December 2020 respectively over national security concerns. Their addition means that American companies seeking to sell to them must apply for a license with the department.
Huawei equipment was also previously banned from use by the federal government over security concerns. SMIC is the largest manufacturer of semiconductor chips in mainland China and is known to have ties to the Chinese military.
The committee voted Thursday to release the data, which it received in May.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), the ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, issued a prepared statement saying that the bipartisan effort to release the documents indicated the seriousness of the matter.
“In addition to sanctions and other tools to impose consequences on bad actors, export controls are fundamental in restricting the transfer of technology and goods to our adversaries,” McCaul said.
McCaul said that such licenses, if materialized into actual shipments, could end up being used by the Chinese military, and suggested that American technologies could be responsible for China’s reported test of a nuclear-capable hypersonic weapon.
“This decision by the House Foreign Affairs Committee reflects our bipartisan support for conducting oversight over our export control system,” McCaul said.