By Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Suppliers to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and China’s top chipmaker SMIC got billions of dollars worth of licenses from November through April to sell the firms goods and technology despite being on a U.S. trade blacklist, documents released by Congress and seen by Reuters showed on Thursday.
According to the documents, 113 export licenses worth $61 billion were approved for suppliers to sell goods to Huawei while another 188 licenses valued at nearly $42 billion were greenlighted for Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC).
The U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs committee on Thursday voted to grant a request by its top Republican member Michael McCaul to release the licensing data, which it received from the Commerce Department in May.
The documents were provided by House Republicans on the foreign affairs committee following the authorization at Thursday’s committee hearing and after a request from Reuters.
The numbers could anger some China hawks in Washington who have made a concerted effort to deprive Chinese companies of access to advanced U.S. technology.
The Commerce Department said in a statement that the licensing information authorized for public disclosure was of limited utility in terms of assessing the actual number of exports destined to Huawei and SMIC.
Approved license applications do not represent actual shipments and around half of all licenses are used, the Commerce Department said. It also said the items may not be provided in the authorized quantities.
License applications involving Huawei and SMIC are processed under licensing policies developed by the Trump administration and maintained by the Biden administration, the Commerce Department added.
Huawei and SMIC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
(Reporting by Karen Freifeld and Alexandra Alper, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
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