By Jenny Leonard and Shelly Banjo
A quiet panic is spreading in Washington and corporate boardrooms that a law taking effect in two months, which bans Huawei Technologies Co. gear, will threaten the business of government contractors.
Aerospace, technology, auto manufacturing and a dozen other industries are engaged in a lobbying frenzy ahead of an Aug. 13 deadline to comply with a far-reaching provision that was tucked into a defense spending bill two years ago.
The broadly written defense law could implicate virtually all companies that count the federal government as a customer, including global subsidiaries and service providers deep in a firm’s supply chain. Excluding subcontractors, more than 100,000 companies provided $598 billion in goods and services directly to the U.S. government last year, according to a Bloomberg Government tally.
To date, measures taken by the Trump administration against Huawei and other Chinese tech companies have been aimed at cutting off their access to American components and networks. This law would ratchet up the pressure even more, putting the onus on U.S. government contractors to comb through their businesses to ensure they have no connections to banned Chinese companies.
