Reuters reports that the Trump administration has shelved a number of key technological security measures against Beijing ahead of a meeting between the two leaders in April, according to four people familiar with the matter.Those shelved measures include banning China Telecom from operating in the United States and restricting the sale of Chinese equipment in U.S. data centers. The United States has also suspended a proposed ban on domestic sales of TP-Link routers, as well as a ban on China Unicom and China Mobile's U.S. Internet operations, and a separate measure to ban Chinese electric trucks and buses from being sold in the United States has also been shelved.
These decisions have never been reported before. Sources said the moves are the latest moves by the Trump administration to avoid angering Beijing after Chinese President Xi Jinping reached a trade truce with U.S. President Donald Trump last October. That meeting also included a pledge from China to delay painful curbs on exports of rare earth minerals that underpin global technology manufacturing.
The Commerce Department defended its actions, saying it was aggressively using its authority "to address national security risks posed by foreign technology and will continue to do so." While these actions by the administration may be intended to help ease 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 at a time when data center construction is surging to meet explosive demand for artificial intelligence.
Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser during Trump's first term, said: "As we desperately try to escape Beijing's control of the rare earth supply chain, the irony is that we are actually giving Beijing new areas of control in the U.S. economy - in telecommunications infrastructure, data centers and artificial intelligence, and electric vehicles."
The Chinese Embassy in the United States stated that Beijing opposes "politicizing trade and technology issues" and welcomes cooperation between the United States and China to make 2026 "a year in which the two major countries move towards mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation." TP-Link Systems, a California-based company that was spun off from a Chinese company in 2024, emphasizes that it is an independently owned U.S. company with "U.S.-managed software, U.S.-hosted data and U.S. industry-standard security practices." "Any suggestion that we are controlled by a foreign country or pose a national security risk is simply false," the company 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 why they were shelved. Trump plans to visit Beijing in April and has invited Xi Jinping to visit the United States later this year.
Some Democratic lawmakers have expressed opposition to shelving the measures. U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement: "You cannot claim to be 'tough on China' while allowing Chinese Communist Party technology to saturate America's critical infrastructure and companies - from the auto industry to telecommunications. In his rush to curry favor with President Xi, Trump is betraying our national security and industry and putting the private data of millions of Americans at risk."
All of the measures the government is now suspending were originally designed to prevent Beijing from accessing and exploiting sensitive U.S. data for extortion or intellectual property theft, and embed itself deeply into internet-connected systems to disrupt critical infrastructure, two sources said. For much of last year, Deputy Commerce Secretary Jeffrey Kessler dragged his feet in advancing the measures, two people familiar with the matter said, citing the need for support from the White House and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. 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 on the same level as China or Russia in terms of technological threats.
Last month, the Commerce Department fired the female official who led the office. She will be replaced by Caitlin Crist, a political appointee with experience in the office, two sources said. One of them added that Crist could reinstate some of those measures if relations with China soured after Trump and Xi's April summit. 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 terms, described China-linked data center hardware as a growing national security threat and urged action to deal with it. He said U.S. data centers could become "remotely controlled islands of China's digital sovereignty" as the United States quietly builds "strategic vulnerabilities in our artificial intelligence and energy pillars."
Wendy Cutler, now a member of the Asia Society Policy Institute and former acting deputy U.S. Trade Representative, said it makes sense for the administration to shelve punitive technical measures while seeking a "stable relationship" with China. "The Chinese have made it very clear that in their view, stability means no more export controls and other restrictive technological measures... so especially before my trip to China in April, I would not expect to issue more control measures," she said. She highlighted the strong threat of new restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals from China. "Not only does it have leverage, it's willing to use it. That ties the president's hands," she added.
TP-Link contacted the Commerce Department last year to make recommendations on how to address national security concerns, two sources said, paving the way for less restrictive regulations on its U.S. router sales. The company said in response to Reuters questions about its technical measures that its routers were not unique targets for cyberattacks and that its code had been rigorously tested by U.S. experts to prevent covert methods from being used to bypass security controls. The company also said it has "fully cooperated with the Department of Commerce" and would not comment on "the specific details of the government investigation."