Duh! Xiaomi Is On The US Trade Blacklist

Ilustrasi Xiaomi (Moritz Kindler / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Towards the end of the Trump administration, the US government added nine other Chinese companies to a blacklist of companies other than Huawei with ties to the Chinese military. One of them is the third largest mobile phone manufacturer in the world, Xiaomi.

With this move, US investors will no longer be able to invest in companies that are specifically blacklisted.

According to an exclusive report by Reuter, they are prohibited from buying shares and securities of companies such as Xiaomi which are part of this list and must relinquish their holdings on it on November 11, 2021.

Unfortunately, so far the Trump administration has not provided any evidence regarding Xiaomi or other companies' ties to the Chinese military. Xiaomi's blacklisting was touted as very sudden and unexpected considering that Xiaomi is basically a smartphone and electronics company.

Prior to this step, the Trump administration focused more on companies engaged in telecommunications (Huawei), the in-flight self-surveillance industry (Comac), aerospace, shipbuilding, chemicals, construction, and other forms of infrastructure.

Currently, the US has blacklisted more than 60 Chinese companies which includes the world's largest drone maker DJI and Chinese semiconductor company SMIC.

Note, however, that this blacklist is different from the US Entity List. So unlike Huawei or DJI, Xiaomi can still import technology without a license, at least for now.

Until now, regarding the US government's decision, neither the Chinese embassy in Washington nor Xiaomi had responded to this information. The impact of this decision also caused Xiaomi's shares on the Hong Kong stock exchange to drop more than 11% in early trading today (January 15).