After Huawei now it's Xiaomi's turn: Donald Trump, completely delegitimized and under accusation, before leaving the White House issues another "ban".
After characterizing a good part of his mandate with the open and hard clash with Huawei, accused of spying on Americans with its smartphones and its 5G technology, the outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump greets everyone by blacklisting another Chinese technology bigwig: Xiaomi.
According to the Department of Defense, in fact, Xiaomi is too close to the Chinese military and poses a threat. As a result, Americans who own shares in the company will have to divest them by Nov. 11, 2021. Trump's move, however, is quite a bit different from what we've already seen with Huawei and will have equally different consequences for users as well. That is, if the new president of the United States, the newly elected Joe Biden, doesn't decide to "pardon" Xiaomi, Huawei or both companies by cancelling the decisions made by Trump in the last two years.
What does the ban against Xiaomi consist of
Huawei, as you may recall, was included in the now famous "Entity List". Those on this list, which is still valid and will continue to be if Biden doesn't remove it, cannot in any way have business dealings with the United States. This, for Huawei, meant having to say goodbye to Android and Qualcomm's SoCs on its smartphones.
For Xiaomi, the situation is different: it is not on the Entity List and will therefore be able to continue doing business with Americans. At the moment, therefore, Trump's ban against Xiaomi is more of a problem for investors than for end users.
Xiaomi defends itself
It wasn't long between the announcement of this measure against Xiaomi and the response of the Chinese giant that, in recent months, has climbed to the bottom rung of the top three smartphone manufacturers in the world (but only because Huawei has lost several positions).
Xiaomi doesn't agree and denies any collaboration with the Chinese military, also reiterating that it doesn't produce any device for military use but only consumer products.