Huawei subsidiary cuts jobs

Author: Mario Schmidtgen
Date: 24.07.2019

70 percent of employees dismissed

The trade war between the USA and China is not over yet. The Chinese tech group Huawei is now responding with countermeasures to the sanctions imposed by cutting jobs at its US research subsidiary Futurewei.

More than 70 percent of the employees were dismissed, which means that 600 of the 850 employees have to leave the company. Futurewei confirmed that the job cuts were necessary “because of the restrictions on business operations” imposed by the US government’s sanctions.

US President Donald Trump blamed Huawei for spying for China about two months ago and instructed to blacklist Huawei. As a result, Futurewei was no longer allowed to hand over any technologies to its parent company. In addition, Huawei was no longer allowed to buy products from American tech companies. Huawei rejected all allegations.

A Futurewei employee reported that work at the tech company had stopped after the sanctions. The US subsidiary has offices near Seattle, Chicago and Dallas. The original plan was to work closely with American universities and research institutes. According to the patent office, Futurewei has over 2,100 registered patents.

Trump announced an early reactivation of business between US companies and the Chinese tech group. The president said at a meeting with the managers of large US tech companies such as Cisco, Intel and Alphabet that a decision would be taken “promptly”. The US companies assured “strong support” for national security restrictions, according to the White House.