WASHINGTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) – The Trump administration has shelved a number of key technological security measures against Beijing ahead of an April meeting between the two presidents. The measures include banning China Telecom’s U.S. operations and restricting sales of Chinese equipment to U.S. data centers, sources said.
The United States has also put on hold a proposed ban on sales of routers in the United States by TP-Link and the U.S. internet businesses of China Unicom and China Mobile, as well as a separate measure to ban Chinese electric trucks and buses from being sold in the United States, four people said on condition of anonymity.
These decisions have not previously been reported. Sources said it was the latest move by the Trump administration to curb U.S. actions that could anger Beijing, following a trade truce between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump in October.
That meeting also included China’s pledge to delay painful export curbs on rare earth minerals that underpin global technology manufacturing.
The Commerce Department defended its actions, saying it was actively using its authority to “address national security risks posed by foreign technology, and we will continue to do so.”
While the administration’s actions may be intended to help defuse trade tensions related to Trump’s costly trade war, some critics say they also leave U.S. data centers and other technology vulnerable to threats from China as data center construction surges to meet exploding demand for artificial intelligence.
“As we desperately try to rid ourselves of Beijing’s influence in the rare earths supply chain, the irony is that we actually give Beijing new areas of influence over the U.S. economy — telecommunications infrastructure, data centers, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles,” said Matt Pottinger, who served as Trump’s deputy national security adviser during his first term.
The Chinese embassy said Beijing opposes “turning trade and technology issues into political weapons” and welcomes cooperation between the United States and China to make 2026 “a year when our two major countries move toward mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation.”
TP-Link Systems Inc. is a California-based company that was spun off from a Chinese company in 2024. The company emphasizes that it is an independently owned U.S. company with “U.S.-managed software, U.S.-hosted data, and security practices consistent with U.S. industry standards.”
“Any suggestion that we are subject to foreign control or pose a national security risk is absolutely false,” it added.
The White House and China’s state-owned telecom giants China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom did not respond to requests for comment on the measures and the reasons for the suspension. Trump plans to visit Beijing in April and invites Xi Jinping to visit the United States later this year.
All of the measures the administration is now suspending were originally intended to prevent Beijing from obtaining and exploiting sensitive U.S. data for ransom or intellectual property theft, and from penetrating deep into internet connectivity systems to disrupt critical infrastructure, two sources said.
Deputy Commerce Secretary Jeffrey Kessler spent much of last year stalling on advancing the measures, two people familiar with the matter said, citing the need for support from the White House and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. The Commerce Department and Kessler did not respond to requests for comment on this account.
But after the trade truce in October, leadership directed staff in the office that oversees foreign technology threats to “focus on Iran and Russia,” two sources said. Iran is not considered a technological threat on the same level as China or Russia. The Commerce Department did not comment on its shifting focus.
Last month, the Commerce Department fired the woman who led the office. She will be replaced by Katelyn Christ, a political appointee with experience in the office, two sources said. One of the people added that Christ could revive some measures if relations with China soured after Trump and Xi’s April summit. Christ and Commerce had no comment.
But some China hawks say such measures cannot wait. U.S. data center capacity is expected to grow nearly 120% by 2030, according to global real estate firm JLL.
David Feith, who served in Trump’s first and second administrations, described China-linked data center hardware as a growing national security threat and urged action to address the problem.
He said that as the United States quietly builds “strategic vulnerabilities in our artificial intelligence and energy backbones,” American data centers could become “remotely controlled islands of China’s digital sovereignty.”
Wendy Cutler, the former acting deputy U.S. trade representative who now works at the Asia Society Policy Institute, said it was reasonable for the government to put punitive technology measures on hold as it seeks “stability” with China.
“The Chinese have made it very clear that stability in their minds means no more export controls and other restrictive technical measures…, so especially ahead of my trip to China in April, I don’t expect to issue more… control measures,” she said, highlighting the strong threat of new restrictions on rare earth mineral exports from China.
“Not only does it have the influence, but it’s willing to use it. It ties the president’s hands,” she added.
TP-Link contacted the U.S. Commerce Department last year to make recommendations on how to address national security concerns, clearing the way for looser regulations on its U.S. router sales, two sources said.
In response to Reuters questions about measures against its technology, the company said its routers were not the only targets of cyberattacks and that its code had been rigorously tested by U.S. experts to prevent the use of covert methods to bypass security controls. The company also said it had “cooperated fully with the Commerce Department” and would not comment on “the specific details of the government investigation.”
(Additional reporting by Laila Kearney, Raphael Satter and David Shepardson; Editing by Chris Sanders and Anna Driver)
