Huawei boss appeals to Joe Biden as it mounts new appeal against US ban

Huawei's Ren Zhengfei gives a press briefing in Taiyuan, China, on Feb 9, 2021

Credit: Jessica Yang/AFP/Getty

Huawei has launched a fresh legal challenge against US government restrictions, seeking to overturn an order that banned other companies from buying its equipment using taxpayer funds.

Lawyers for the embattled Chinese telecommunications giant filed a petition on Monday appealing its dispute with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to a federal court.

The lawsuit asked judges to reverse the FCC’s final ruling in December, which branded the company a threat to national security. The suit describes that decision as “arbitrary, capricious and an abuse of discretion".

Meanwhile, Huawei’s founder Ren Zhengfei appealed to President Joe Biden to treat his company more kindly than Donald Trump did, saying that opening up US sales of Huawei technology would be “in the interest of US companies”.

Mr Ren said: “I would welcome [a] phone call, and the message is around joint development and shared success. The U.S. wants to have economic growth and China wants to have economic growth as well.”

Huawei and the West – a timeline

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of legal battles with the US government, beginning with President Trump ban on American companies buying Huawei equipment in May 2019.

 The FCC dispute has been running since that November, when the agency voted to freeze Huawei’s technology out of federal subsidies, despite its wide use in rural telecoms networks. 

Huawei has opposed those actions at every step, denying that it has spied or would spy on its customers on behalf of any government. A previous lawsuit against prohibitions on federal agencies contracting with Huawei was dismissed last February.

A spokesman for the FCC said: “Last year the FCC issued a final designation identifying Huawei as a national security threat based on a substantial body of evidence developed by the FCC and numerous US national security agencies. We will continue to defend that decision."