14 DAY TRIAL // Huawei is still not allowed to work with American companies according to the US executive order signed by President Donald Trump in mid-May, but this doesn’t pose any risk for the future of the Chinese tech giant.
This is what Huawei founder and CEO Ren Zhengei said in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance, explaining that the company can very well survive without American partners too.
“If U.S, companies were to stop supplying us altogether, our production would not stop for a single day in the future. Rather, we would ramp up production. There's no lethal risk that threatens Huawei's survival at all,” he said.
Ren admitted that Huawei wasn’t fully prepared for the ban in the United States, so the company is now turning to some cost-saving measures, including layoffs at its research and development unit based in the United States and called Futurewei.
Huawei way ahead all of its rivals, founder says
Part of the engineers here will be transferred to China, while others will be let go, and Ren confirmed that the restrictions in the United States make its collaboration with Futurewei nearly impossible.
“This makes it difficult for us to manage this company and collaborate with them,” Ren said. “Now we cannot make further investment because we are not allowed to engage with Futurewei employees. What is our next step? This depends on the U.S. government's direction.”
The Huawei founder emphasized that his company is well ahead of its American rivals, and by banning his firm, the United States could be left behind in the 5G race.
“Even if they have supercomputers and super-large-capacity connections, the U.S. might still fall behind because they don't have super-fast connections,” Ren explained. “Shutting Huawei out is the start of the U.S. falling behind.”
According to a separate report, US officials will meet with representatives of American tech companies to discuss the sanctions against Huawei in the coming weeks.