Some U.S. Senators Want The White House to Blacklist Honor

A group of U.S. Republican Senators led by Marco Rubio has written to the Biden administration demanding the blacklisting of Huawei’s former unit, Honor.

The letter dated October 4, 2021, states that Honor is essentially the “arm” of the Chinese government which now has access to U.S. technology. The letter was co-signed by Senators John Cornyn and Rick Scott, according to Reuters.

“Beijing has effectively dodged a critical American export control,” Senator Rubio wrote in the letter.

“By failing to act in response, the Department of Commerce risks setting a dangerous precedent and communicating to adversaries that we lack the capacity or willpower to punish blatant financial engineering by an authoritarian regime.”

Huawei sold off the Honor brand last year amidst stiff sanctions from the U.S.

Huawei previously said that it won’t hold shares in the spinoff or involve itself in the management of Honor. Meanwhile, the Chinese Embassy in Washington has accused the U.S. of “smearing” Huawei without credible evidence.

The White House under President Trump made the decision to put Huawei on the trade blacklist. At the time, the administration alleged that Huawei posed a national security threat. The blacklisting meant that Huawei’s U.S. suppliers had to acquire separate licenses to sell components, including semiconductors to the company.

Not too long after, Google was restricted from providing its software and Google Mobile Services to Huawei. This, in combination with the sanctions, meant that Huawei eventually had to sell off Honor.

Early last week, Honor tweeted it has managed to secure “cooperation with a number of supplier partners in the early stage.” The Huawei spinoff added that the upcoming HONOR 50 lineup of phones will come built-in with Google Mobile Services. We got some evidence of this on our HONOR 50 hands-on last week.

The HONOR 50 packs a 6.57-inch 2340×1080 OLED screen with a 120 Hz refresh rate. A mammoth 108-megapixel camera lies in the back, complemented by an 8-megapixel ultrawide, 2-megapixel depth, and 2-megapixel macro sensors.

The smartphone also offers a single 32-megapixel punch-hole selfie camera. It runs on the octa-core Snapdragon 778G 5G SoC and has a 4,300 mAh battery. The HONOR 50 comes with Android 11 with the Magic UI 4.2 skin. While it’s not available globally yet, we do know that the HONOR 50 will reach Europe on October 26.