Chinese technology giant Huawei is facing a landmark criminal trial in the United States amid Washington’s long-running tech rivalry with Beijing. The trial began in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, on September 9, with US prosecutors portraying Huawei as a criminal enterprise that spent two decades stealing technology from US companies, deceiving banks and circumventing sanctions on Iran. Huawei has pleaded not guilty and says the US government is attempting to turn ordinary business disputes and the actions of individual employees into evidence of a company-wide conspiracy.
The trial is expected to last about three months and overlaps with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s September 23-25 visit to Washington, where trade, artificial intelligence, tariffs and access to critical technologies are likely to be on the agenda. US prosecutors have accused the company of racketeering, money laundering, bank and wire fraud, sanctions violations, obstruction and conspiring to steal trade secrets from five US technology companies. Prosecutors say the alleged wrongdoing stretched from about 1999 to 2020.
Prosecutors allege Huawei stole technology, including internet-router source code from Cisco and a robotic arm used by T-Mobile to test phones. They also accuse Huawei of concealing the nature of its operations in Iran to move US dollars through the financial system despite US sanctions. The government also alleges that Huawei supplied equipment that could help Iranian authorities monitor protesters during demonstrations in 2009.
Huawei, a major manufacturer of telecommunications equipment, denies any wrongdoing. The tech giant’s lawyer Brian Heberlig told jurors the case was about “competition, not conspiracy. Ordinary business dealings, not criminal conduct.” Heberlig accused prosecutors of “cherry-picking isolated events” to construct a conspiracy that did not exist.
Huawei’s defence says some incidents involved individual employees whose actions were dealt with internally, rather than reflecting company policy. He told jurors that prosecutors will describe routine activities by global tech companies “but will twist those ordinary activities to try to make them look criminal”. Huawei separately described the broader prosecution as an attempt to undermine its competitiveness, saying the US government’s “overarching narrative is demonstrably false” and that it had “the utmost respect for intellectual property”.
The case originated during Donald Trump’s first presidency. His administration placed Huawei on a US trade blacklist in 2019 and pushed allies to exclude the company from 5G networks, arguing its equipment could present national security and espionage risks. Huawei has repeatedly denied that its technology is used for spying.
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