WASHINGTON, July 2 — White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said today US trade talks with China are heading in the right direction and any concessions to Beijing on Huawei Technologies was small in the context of a larger trade deal.
“We’re headed in a very good direction,” Navarro said in an interview with CNBC. “It’s complicated, as the president said, correctly, this will take time and we want to get it right. So let’s get it right.”
Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed in a meeting on Saturday at a Group of 20 summit in Japan to restart trade talks after the last major round of negotiations collapsed in May.
The partial lifting of restrictions on Huawei was a key element of the agreement, which allows expanded sales of US technology supplies to the Chinese telecommunications giant. Washington put Huawei on an export blacklist in May, citing national security concerns over its 5G network technology.
Navarro played down the concession on Huawei, saying US policy with respect to the 5G component has not changed.
“All we’ve done basically is to allow the sale of chips to Huawei and these are lower tech items which do not impact national security whatever,” Navarro said.
“Selling chips to Huawei, a small amount of chips - less than US$1 billion (RM4.14 billion) a year - in the short run is small in the scheme of things.” — Reuters
