Major U.S. companies that supply Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. will meet with Trump administration officials at the White House on Monday to discuss the current state of the ban on sales to the company.

According to a report from Reuters today, representatives from Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc., Google LLC and Micron Technology Inc. will meet with White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Microsoft Corp. and Broadcom Inc. are also said to have been invited to the meeting.

Officially, the meeting is not about Huawei alone. A White House official said Huawei was expected to “come up but that it is not the reason why they are convening the meeting.”

Whether the meeting is primarily about Huawei or not, the companies attending are all Huawei suppliers and would be keen to gain clarification on the administration’s current stance when it comes to supplying technology to China’s largest smartphone maker.

The original ban put Huawei on the U.S. Commerce Department’s list of banned entities, which prevents American companies from doing business with it unless they obtain a special license. As part of trade negotiations, U.S. President Donald Trump threw the company a lifeline in June, lifting some of the bans on “widely available products,” those that don’t pose a national security risk but Huawei itself remains on the banned entities list. In effect, companies supplying Huawei will still have to obtain special licenses to export technology to the company, a process that means uncertainty about ongoing supply agreements.

Complicating matters further, a bill presented to the Senate on Thursday would ban Huawei from buying or selling U.S. patents, as well as give the U.S. government the right to intervene in patent licensing agreements involving the company. The bill is not yet law, but messing with legally established patent regulations has the potential to present further issues for U.S. tech companies.

The fear is that laws targeting Chinese-owned patents could result in a tit-for-tat with China. That country may then decide to impose similar restrictions or outright ignore U.S.-owned patents within its borders.

Photo: Pxhere