Trump meets tech leaders in "constructive" talks on Huawei, trade

President Donald Trump met with seven CEOs from tech and telecom on Monday to discuss trade practices, including future trade with Huawei, now on a U.S. blacklist.

The White House called the meeting “constructive” in a statement. The executives wanted “timely licensing decisions” from the Department of Commerce regarding Huawei, and the president agreed, the White House said. The licenses would allow companies to continue to sell some products to Huawei as it remains on the entity list that bans commerce with countries posing national security risks.

The CEOs were Robert Swan of Intel, Hock Tan of Broadcom, Steven Mollenkopf of Qualcomm, Sanjay Mehrotra of Micron, Sundar Pichai of Google, Chuck Robbins of Cisco and Stephen Milligan of Western Digital. Intel issued a short statement that said it regularly engages with the Trump Administration, adding that it wanted to share Intel’s perspective on economic issues at the Monday meeting “including how the current trade situation with China impacts the critical US semiconductor industry,” according to CNBC.

A Micron spokesperson told CNBC in reference to the meeting, “We believe strategic investment and policies that ensure open and fair trade on a level playing field are essential to ongoing U.S. technology leadership as well as economic growth throughout the world.”

Several executives for U.S. semiconductor companies have told FierceElectronics that the U.S. relationship with Huawei could hurt their businesses, but they also have praised Trump Administration officials for attacking Chinese companies for theft of IP.

Meanwhile, six U.S. senators are supporting a hard-line approach to trade with Huawei, supporting legislation that would remove any Commerce Department ability to allow waivers of Huawei’s entity listing and require congressional approval to allow waivers. The senators are Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. Companion legislation has been introduced in the House.

Cotton has called Huawei a “front for the Chinese Communist Party” while Van Hollen said “President Trump shouldn’t be able to trade away those legitimate security concerns” with Huawei.