Industries began tallying up the likely costs of President Trump's latest executive orders this week targeting Huawei, the Chinese telecom manufacturer that sits at the center of the U.S./China trade dispute, after Trump essentially barred all U.S. telecommunications firms from using its equipment and blocked it from access to U.S.-made goods.
The impact: Major U.S. telecoms don't use Huawei equipment, but roughly a quarter of smaller rural network providers do, according to a Financial Times story, and those companies may have to spend millions to replace those devices.
- The Huawei ban could also make it even harder to bring 5G networks to less heavily populated U.S. regions.
- In preparation for the likelihood of the U.S. shutting off its access to parts, Huawei "has been stockpiling critical U.S. components for almost a year," the South China Morning Post reports.
- With those moves, analysts suggested, Huawei can probably buy itself up to a year's time to build a supply chain to provide alternatives to the key U.S. components it obtains from companies like Intel and Qualcomm, per SCMP.
Go deeper: Trump may stop Huawei in U.S., but the underseas cable race continues
