Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei said a 90-day temporary license the US granted is not that meaningful for the company, as it is well prepared and has kept its core technologies intact. 

The company is able to continue providing products and services, and the US sanctions will not hurt our core business, Ren said in a group interview at the company’s headquarters in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province on Tuesday. 

“In such a critical moment, I’m grateful to US companies, as they’ve contributed a lot to Huawei’s development and showed their conscientiousness on the matter,” Ren said. 

“As far as I know, US companies have been making efforts to persuade the US government to let them cooperate with Huawei,” he added. 

The US Commerce Department said on Monday that it is issuing a 90-day general license for Huawei until August 19, granting operators to make other arrangements and allow operations to continue for existing Huawei mobile phone users and rural broadband networks.

The Trump administration had announced that the US government would add Huawei and its affiliates to a so-called Entity List, which will ban the Chinese telecom giant from buying parts and components from US companies without US government approval. 

The US sanctions triggered a chain reaction in the supply chain. US tech firms such as Google, Qualcomm, Intel and Xilinx have reportedly frozen the supply of software and components to Huawei. 

“We always need US-developed chipsets, and we can’t exclude American products with a narrow mind,” Ren said.