As part of Trump's campaign of "total pressure" against China during trade negotiations, the Trump regime labeled Chinese-owned telecommunications giant Huawei as a threat to national security and added the company to the Commerce Department's export control "blacklist." That meant American-owned companies couldn't sell their own goods and services to Huawei.
I'm not qualified to say if Huawei is or isn't a legitimate threat to national security, but I can say the Trump regime never substantiated those claims in a court of law or to the public.
Huawei is now directly challenging those assertions in court.
In a lawsuit filed Monday at the New Orleans Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Huawei said the Dec. 11 declaration by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission was arbitrary and capricious, exceeded its authority and violated federal rule-making procedures. Huawei also claims the FCC lacks “substantial evidence” and failed to give the company a chance to defend itself before the rule was finalized.
“The order on review potentially impacts the financial interests of the telecommunications industry as a whole, including manufacturers, end users, and service providers in a broad range of industries, such as internet, cellular and landline telephone, and similar telecommunications applications,” Huawei said in the court filing, which was reported earlier by Dow Jones.
It will be interesting and telling to see where this goes next because Huawei is not arguing against the Trump regime now; they're arguing against the Biden administration.
The new administration may defend the governments past position in court, but what evidence do they actually have to present? The Trump regime never offered any so it remains to be seen what evidence there is to justify blacklisting the largest telecommunications company in the world. But in any event, the way the Biden administration handles this case could tell us what the next several years of relations with China will look like.
Biden administration officials are undoubtedly aware that many if not most of the actions taken against Chinese entities were carried out because of personal vendetta originating from the Trump White House. And not just from Trump himself but also from his top advisers like Ron Vara Peter Navarro.
It will take months to do so, but they might need to hit the reset button in at least some of these cases. If I'm a Biden administration official, I'm hoping the court strikes down the Trump era policy so it will be easier to develop my own policy.
The choice to file this challenge under the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is mildly peculiar to me as that is a conservative, Trump-loving district.