Report: HUAWEI planning to lay off hundreds of US-based employees

According to a new report from The Wall Street Journal, Chinese telecommunications company Huawei plans to layoff hundreds of its U.S.-based employees. It’s very likely these reported layoffs are related to the United States government’s ban on HUAWEI, which is still (mostly) in effect.

The report from The WSJ suggests most of the layoffs will be centered on workers involved with an R&D subsidiary called Futurewei Technologies. HUAWEI runs multiple Futurewei labs throughout the U.S. which are staffed by both U.S. citizens as well as foreign citizens temporarily in the U.S.

Reportedly, HUAWEI will give the option to visiting Chinese citizens of returning to China for reassignment. However, the U.S.-based employees will be let go.

Some employees have allegedly already been notified that their position has been terminated while others await a final decision from the company.

While the termination of R&D employees in the United States won’t drastically affect the profitability of HUAWEI in the near future, the reported layoff round does suggest that the company does not expect the government’s ban to fully let up any time soon.

The U.S. government’s ban on HUAWEI came down in May. Recently, President Donald Trump revealed that the government would lift major aspects of the overall ban, which seemed like good news for HUAWEI. However, the ban still stands mostly unchanged.

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