Huawei lays off over 600 workers from its Futurewei subsidiary in the U.S.

nanoguy

Posts: 1,355   +27
Staff member
In brief: The Chinese telecom giant has been having a hard time running its U.S.-based research arm after being blacklisted by the Commerce Department, so it's now letting go of hundreds of employees that were an important part of its efforts to stay ahead in the 5G race.

Huawei is cutting the jobs of more than 600 people from its Futurewei research arm in the U.S., confirming an earlier report. The company made it official on Monday when it sent an email to more than two thirds of the division's workforce, explaining that the layoffs -- effective July 22 -- come as a result of the U.S. blacklisting that saw 68 of its other subsidiaries placed on the infamous "entity list."

Futurewei, which has offices in California, Texas, Illinois and Washington State, employed 850 people that were responsible with developing and patenting technologies for its parent company who poured $510 million last year into the efforts. Once the Trump order went into effect, the research arm became unable to export its work back to China, effectively coming to a standstill.

Reuters got word from one of the employees not affected by the layoffs that Huawei asked people who worked at Futurewei to beam all data back to its Chinese servers the day before the ban came into effect. Prior to that, they served a key role in securing over 2,100 patents related in part to 5G and camera technology. On a positive note, the Chinese telecom giant promised to offer severance packages to those who saw their jobs cut.

The U.S.-China trade war is having a great impact on Huawei's business, and while American companies are using a loophole to circumvent the ban, the company's struggle is far from over. Its smartphone business has been showing signs of slowing growth, and since its Android alternative isn't really a mobile OS, its future remains uncertain.

On Monday, President Trump said he would award U.S. companies licensing deals with Huawei in a timely manner, so there's still hope for the remaining 1,200 people involved with the company's local supply chain and customer support.

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Send them back, send them back, send them back!!! OK, OK, somebody had to make a dumb joke of it!
 
They fell victim to the war. But the cause is a good and righteous one.

F

Its a war with no winners; exports are falling across the globe (down 15% so far this year), and pretty much everyone sees the signs of an imminent worldwide recession. Hell, even US manufacturing, after rising a bit immediately after the election, is going down again due to declining exports and rising prices at home.

What people need to get is that companies don't just make and sell stuff locally anymore; the economy is worldwide now. You can't protect local manufacturing via tariffs, as all you do is remove your ability for your businesses to compete overseas. This trade war is the dumbest, self-destructive act the US government has done in my lifetime.
 
They fell victim to the war. But the cause is a good and righteous one.

F

Its a war with no winners; exports are falling across the globe (down 15% so far this year), and pretty much everyone sees the signs of an imminent worldwide recession. Hell, even US manufacturing, after rising a bit immediately after the election, is going down again due to declining exports and rising prices at home.

What people need to get is that companies don't just make and sell stuff locally anymore; the economy is worldwide now. You can't protect local manufacturing via tariffs, as all you do is remove your ability for your businesses to compete overseas. This trade war is the dumbest, self-destructive act the US government has done in my lifetime.

The era of logic and facts are gone my friend, apparently everything has to hit rock bottom before people realize you can't run a country on grabbin p***y and sending people back the way they came or blaming everything on other countries.
It's truly a sad time when the president brags about subsidizing coal mines to employ workers and bans technology companies on false pretenses etc.
 
The era of logic and facts are gone my friend, apparently everything has to hit rock bottom before people realize you can't run a country on grabbin p***y and sending people back the way they came or blaming everything on other countries.
It's truly a sad time when the president brags about subsidizing coal mines to employ workers and bans technology companies on false pretenses etc.

He's just a symptom of a larger problem; he is basically just a copy of the people who elected him. Think about that, and you start to realize what the real problems are.
 
Its a war with no winners; exports are falling across the globe (down 15% so far this year), and pretty much everyone sees the signs of an imminent worldwide recession. Hell, even US manufacturing, after rising a bit immediately after the election, is going down again due to declining exports and rising prices at home.

What people need to get is that companies don't just make and sell stuff locally anymore; the economy is worldwide now. You can't protect local manufacturing via tariffs, as all you do is remove your ability for your businesses to compete overseas. This trade war is the dumbest, self-destructive act the US government has done in my lifetime.
My opinion is that there were countries just like USA which were leading in technology and industrialism. And then they were pushed to the curb of trading by other countries which were able to provide cheaper labor and slowly gain wealth and tech from those that were once in leading position. I think that the history can teach and to some extent predict what will happen to the USA. And maybe, we should make decisions accordingly, attempting to not follow mistakes of the past and mistakes of the countries that lost their leading positions.
I do not know and will not claim to know if sanctions and taxes imposed on China will solve our problems. Only thing I completely agree with, China taxing our trade goods without equal taxing of their goods sold to us was unacceptable. People in government that allowed that to go unnoticed for years had to be released from the burden of their positions and high salaries. Same goes for Europe. All taxing or tax free for all. I personally would prefer no taxing, it is us USA citizens and likewise those in Europe and Asia that pay extra for these trade wars.
 
My opinion is that there were countries just like USA which were leading in technology and industrialism. And then they were pushed to the curb of trading by other countries which were able to provide cheaper labor and slowly gain wealth and tech from those that were once in leading position. I think that the history can teach and to some extent predict what will happen to the USA. And maybe, we should make decisions accordingly, attempting to not follow mistakes of the past and mistakes of the countries that lost their leading positions.
I do not know and will not claim to know if sanctions and taxes imposed on China will solve our problems. Only thing I completely agree with, China taxing our trade goods without equal taxing of their goods sold to us was unacceptable. People in government that allowed that to go unnoticed for years had to be released from the burden of their positions and high salaries. Same goes for Europe. All taxing or tax free for all. I personally would prefer no taxing, it is us USA citizens and likewise those in Europe and Asia that pay extra for these trade wars.

Keep in mind the reason for a lot of the tariffs put on US goods is due to the large subsidies that certain industries get; food imports to many countries get hit by tariffs for that very reason, and that is typically permissible under WTO rules.

What it comes down to is regions with high labor costs will *never* sustain large scale manufacturing that is dependent on unskilled labor. And the sooner everyone admits it, the sooner we can focus on creating jobs to replace the ones that have been being lost for decades now. But as long as we try desperately to hold onto a fading industry, we'll never be able to replace the jobs lost.
 
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