US court relieves Xiaomi from Trump's blacklist

Xiaomi gets relief as a court temporarily removed the smartphone maker from the United States government's blacklist invoked by Trump's administration. The blacklist had barred Americans from investing in Xiaomi.

In Washington, the US District Judge Rudolph Contreras ruled that Defence and Treasury departments "have not made the case that the national security interests at stake here are compelling". He issued a preliminary injunction removing Xiaomi from the blacklist and suspended the ban on US investors buying the company's securities.

Days before leaving office, Trump issued a series of announcements targeting Chinese firms including Xiaomi, Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation and social media platform TikTok, intensifying the trade war between the two nations.

Xiaomi said that Washington's move to blacklist the firm were "incorrect" and had "deprived the company of legal due process," in an appeal it filed in January.

The US court judgement came the same day the US regulators deemed Huawei and ZTE of Chinese telecom gear firms a threat to national security. Last month, Huawei's chief and founder Ren Zhengfei met US president Joe Biden to release sanctions introduced by Trump's administration. Huawei has been at the centre of the Sino-American rivalry in recent years, rooted in trade and technology.

Xiaomi was one of nine firms classified by the Pentagon as "Communist Chinese military companies". At the same time, Washington claimed that Huawei has close ties to China's military and that Beijing could use its equipment for espionage, which Huawei denied.