Huawei Sanctions Timeline: Every Major US Action From 2019 to 2026
Huawei is the company the US has spent the most effort trying to contain. In 2019 it was the world’s largest telecom equipment maker and was about to pass Samsung as the biggest smartphone vendor. Seven years of US measures later it is still huge, still profitable and now building its own chips, operating system and AI accelerators. Both halves of that sentence are true, and the timeline below shows how.
It runs from the 2019 Entity List listing through mid-2026, with the key Huawei responses alongside. For how Huawei fits into the wider list of Chinese companies under US restrictions, see the Entity List additions tracker.
Before 2019: the warnings
The pressure did not start in 2019. A 2012 House Intelligence Committee report called Huawei and ZTE national security threats and told US carriers to avoid their gear. In August 2018 Section 889 of the defense authorization act barred federal agencies from buying Huawei and ZTE equipment.
In December 2018 Canada arrested Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer and the founder’s daughter, at Vancouver’s airport on a US warrant. In January 2019 the Justice Department unsealed two indictments: one for bank fraud tied to Iran sanctions, one for stealing T-Mobile’s robot testing technology.
2019: the Entity List
| Date | Action | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| May 15, 2019 | Executive Order 13873 on ICT supply chain threats | Gave Commerce power to block telecom gear from “foreign adversaries” |
| May 16, 2019 | Huawei and 68 affiliates added to the Entity List | US suppliers need a license; Google suspends Android services licensing |
| May 2019 | Temporary general license | Lets existing networks and phones keep getting support |
| Aug 2019 | 46 more affiliates added | Closes routes through overseas subsidiaries |
| Nov 2019 | FCC bars use of Universal Service funds for Huawei and ZTE gear | Starts the “rip and replace” program for rural US carriers |
The Android loss hurt most outside China. New Huawei phones shipped without the Google Play Store, Gmail or Maps, and sales in Europe collapsed. Huawei’s answer was Huawei Mobile Services and its own app store, which never came close to replacing Google abroad.
2020: the chip cutoff
The 2019 listing had a hole. Huawei’s HiSilicon unit designed its own Kirin and Ascend chips and had TSMC make them in Taiwan, outside US jurisdiction. Commerce closed that in two steps.
| Date | Action | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| May 15, 2020 | First foreign direct product rule (FDPR) for Huawei | Chips made abroad from Huawei designs using US tools need a license |
| July 2020 | UK reverses course on Huawei in 5G | No new Huawei 5G kit from 2021; all removed by 2027 |
| Aug 17, 2020 | Expanded FDPR plus 38 more affiliates | Any chip made with US tools and bound for Huawei needs a license, whoever designed it |
| Sept 15, 2020 | Rule takes full effect | TSMC stops shipping; Kirin 9000 becomes the last TSMC-made Huawei flagship chip |
| Nov 2020 | Huawei sells its Honor budget phone brand | Honor, as a separate company, can buy US chips again |
The FDPR is the key idea. Almost every chip factory on earth uses American tools from Applied Materials, Lam Research or KLA, so US law could follow those tools into Taiwanese and Korean fabs. Our explainer on export control terms walks through how it works.
2021 to 2022: pressure without new big rules
The Biden administration kept the restrictions and granted some licenses, mostly for older 4G chips and non-5G parts. Huawei’s revenue fell from 891 billion yuan in 2020 to 637 billion in 2021 as its phone business shrank.
| Date | Action | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Mar 2021 | FCC publishes its Covered List | Formally names Huawei gear as a national security risk |
| Sept 2021 | Meng Wanzhou deal with US prosecutors | She returns to China; two Canadians held in China are freed the same day |
| Nov 2022 | FCC bans authorization of new Huawei equipment | New Huawei telecom and camera gear can no longer be sold in the US |
2023: the Mate 60 surprise
In early 2023 reports said Commerce had stopped approving license renewals for US companies selling to Huawei. Then in August 2023, during a visit to Beijing by Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Huawei released the Mate 60 Pro. Inside was the Kirin 9000S, made by SMIC on a 7nm-class process using older DUV lithography tools.
It was not as advanced as TSMC’s best, and yields were reportedly poor. But it showed China could make chips the US rules were meant to keep out of reach. It also marked Huawei’s return to 5G phones. The episode fed directly into tighter tool controls on SMIC and the Chinese equipment sector, laid out in our US chip export controls timeline.
2024: licenses revoked, Huawei goes its own way
| Date | Action | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| May 2024 | Commerce revokes Intel and Qualcomm licenses to sell to Huawei | Ends US laptop and phone chip sales to Huawei |
| Oct 2024 | HarmonyOS NEXT ships | Huawei’s phone OS drops Android app compatibility entirely |
| Dec 2024 | New tool and HBM controls, 140 Chinese entities listed | Targets the fabs and toolmakers in Huawei’s domestic chip network |
By 2024 Huawei had mostly stopped trying to stay inside the US ecosystem. Its revenue recovered to about 862 billion yuan in 2024, close to its pre-sanction peak, helped by phones, cars and cloud.
2025: the Ascend problem
The fight moved to AI accelerators. Huawei’s Ascend 910B and 910C chips became China’s main alternative to Nvidia.
| Date | Action | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 2025 | Sophgo added to the Entity List | A TSMC-made die had turned up inside an Ascend 910B, ordered through Sophgo |
| May 2025 | Commerce guidance on Huawei Ascend chips | Using Ascend 910B, 910C or 910D anywhere in the world may break US export rules |
| Sept 2025 | Huawei publishes a multi-year Ascend roadmap | Ascend 950, 960 and 970 with its own high bandwidth memory; large “SuperPoD” clusters |
The May 2025 guidance was a striking claim of reach: it warned companies outside China that buying or using Huawei’s AI chips could expose them to US penalties. Beijing called it discrimination. The roadmap a few months later was Huawei’s reply: if it cannot buy the best single chip, it will link thousands of its own chips together and win on scale. Memory is part of that plan, which is why HBM is now a front line of its own.
Revenue through the sanctions
| Year | Revenue (billion yuan) |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 859 |
| 2020 | 891 |
| 2021 | 637 |
| 2022 | 642 |
| 2023 | 704 |
| 2024 | 862 |
The drop in 2021 was the phone business. The recovery came from a rebuilt domestic phone line, car technology, cloud and enterprise sales, almost all of it inside China.
What the record shows
The measures did what they were designed to do in the short run. Huawei lost its global phone business and its access to the world’s best chipmaker, and its share of telecom equipment outside China shrank as the UK, Sweden and others pushed it out of 5G.
The long-run effect is less clear. Huawei now designs its own processors, runs its own operating system and has become the anchor of a Chinese chip supply chain that includes SMIC, domestic toolmakers and a growing memory effort. Some of the blowback also landed on US suppliers that lost a large customer.
For how Huawei fits into the bigger picture, the anchor page is the complete timeline of US-China technology decoupling. The next things to watch are whether SMIC can push below 7nm-class production at volume, how many Ascend chips Huawei can actually ship, and whether chips keep leaking the other way, the subject of chip smuggling explained.