Huawei’s racketeering trial opens in New York six days before Xi meets Trump

The Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei arrived in federal court in Brooklyn to answer charges that cut to the core of US-China technological rivalry — racketeering, bank fraud, sanctions evasion and the alleged theft of trade secrets from five American technology companies. The company has pleaded not guilty on all counts. Jury selection began six days before Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to meet Donald Trump in Washington, putting the legal and diplomatic calendars on a collision course that neither side can fully control.

The case before US District Judge Ann Donnelly is expected to run roughly three months. At its center is a pattern of alleged deception that prosecutors say stretched across two continents: Huawei is accused of conducting business in Iran through a Hong Kong subsidiary called Skycom, routing transactions and acquiring American-origin technology in violation of US sanctions. The company is also accused of a racketeering conspiracy to steal trade secrets from rivals including T-Mobile, Sprint, and Cisco — in some cases, prosecutors allege, by offering cash bonuses to employees who delivered proprietary information. Separately, the indictment charges Huawei with supplying surveillance equipment that Iran used to track and identify protesters during the 2009 anti-government demonstrations in Tehran. The company has disputed the charges and rebuffed attempts to characterize its Skycom ties as anything other than legitimate business.

The real-economy stakes run wider than any verdict. Huawei supplies 5G infrastructure to network operators in more than 170 countries. European governments operating Huawei-built equipment have faced years of US intelligence pressure to accelerate replacement programs, which would add billions in capital expenditure to carriers already struggling with elevated borrowing costs. A conviction strengthens that political case. A protracted acquittal — or even a hung jury — complicates it, and emboldens governments that have resisted rip-and-replace on cost grounds.

What the trial cannot do is alter Huawei’s trajectory inside China. Since US export controls severed the company’s access to leading-edge chips in 2020, Huawei and its domestic partners have systematically rebuilt a parallel technology stack. The company shipped a 5G-capable handset in 2023 using a chip fabricated at SMIC, China’s state-backed foundry — a development that arrived years ahead of what the export controls were intended to allow. The technology gap is real, but it is narrowing. The DOJ case that took five years to reach trial is prosecuting a company that no longer depends on American semiconductors the way it once did.

The diplomatic dimension remains acute. The September 24 meeting between Xi and Trump will be their first since Trump’s return to the White House, and trade and technology policy are expected to dominate the agenda. The two governments have spent months signaling openness to negotiations on export controls, rare earths, and semiconductor policy. Any dramatic courtroom development — a witness who names Chinese state coordination, a document that surfaces in cross-examination — could instantly reset the tone of those talks. The court operates on its own schedule, but the trial does not exist in a diplomatic vacuum.

The case has its origins in Reuters reporting from 2012 and 2013 documenting Huawei’s ties to Skycom. A criminal indictment was unsealed in 2019; Huawei’s chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Vancouver that year and held for nearly three years before returning to China in a prisoner swap in 2021. The full corporate trial, arriving five years later, is the legal system completing an arc that the diplomatic and commercial landscape has already moved well past.

Jury selection opened September 8. A verdict, if one arrives on the trial’s projected schedule, is not expected before December.

Tags: Huawei, Xi Jinping, 5G, Iran sanctions, US-China