News & Reviews:   US Government

Last year when former President Trump was around, he was on a roll banning Chinese tech brands such as Huawei, TikTok and WeChat for being a security threat. It was only a few weeks ago that Xiaomi got let off the hook, but right now, current President Biden has decided to revoke the ban on TikTok and WeChat.

Earlier, Xiaomi had been blacklisted by the United States as former President Donald Trump designated the company as a “Communist Chinese military company". As a result, US citizens and companies were barred from investing or dealing with Xiaomi. Until now, it is reported that the Chinese tech company is finally removed from the blacklist following a lawsuit to US courts.

It looks like the US government is now after Xiaomi for the same reason that they imposed a trade ban on HUAWEI. Earlier, it was reported that US individuals or companies are not allowed to invest in the Chinese tech company anymore as it was added to the blacklist of companies suspected of having ties to the ruling Chinese Communist Party. However, the good news has arrived today with an official statement from Xiaomi claiming that the restriction has now been removed.

This morning, we noticed that some of our Malaysian media content creator friends receiving an email from YouTube. It appears that the company will begin deducting US taxes from June 2021 from payments to creators outside of the country. How much? According to the email, it may go up to 24% of the creator's total earnings worldwide. 

With former US President Trump and his administration out of the office, many wondered if the new US President Biden would lift the ban on Huawei. We previously reported that the new US administration is probably not interested in removing the ban, so Huawei has decided to ask the court to overturn the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s decision for labelling them as a national security threat.

With the Biden administration taking over, many must have high hopes that the new government will reconsider the trade sanction imposed on HUAWEI. However, it looks like there will be no good news as the President's pick for Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo has no intentions of removing the sanction.

Right after the US government had given license to firms for supplying chips to Huawei, the next good news to the China tech company is getting the approval to work with Sony and OmniVision once again for receiving their tech components.

While Huawei was able to reveal the latest Mate 40 series, the company's relationship with the US government isn't getting any better which is unfortunate. To make things even worst, several affiliated companies that are associated with Huawei were also barred or withdrawn from doing business.

Huawei just can't seem to catch a break these days. First, it was the US government disallowing their devices to feature Google Mobile Services, then banning their affiliated companies and partners to receive tech components. Now, it's Sony's turn to suspend their camera supplies to Huawei.

Previously, ByteDance had rejected Microsoft's offer in acquiring the company and we wondered what could happen next. Well, turns out that we got our answer sooner than we thought as it has been confirmed that TikTok is indeed working with Oracle and Walmart as well.