Last month, a report from Reuters had revealed that the Trump administration was contemplating changing U.S. laws to cut Huawei off from global chipset distributions such as TSMC.

Presently, a limited new report from Reuters suggests senior administrators in the Trump government have decided to go ahead with the proposed rule change.

Under the proposed regulation change, all foreign companies that make use of American chipsets equipment will be required to obtain authorization from the U.S. government before it will be allowed to supply certain chips to Huawei.

Reliably, sources aware with the matter, the rule change is largely aimed at blocking sales of the chipset to Huawei by TSMC, which occurs to be a major producer of chipset for the Chinese company’s HiSilicon associate.

HiSilicon’s Kirin 990 5G chipset, which powers the Mate 30 and P40 series phones, is produced using TSMC’s 7nm+ EUV process. Virtually all major chipmakers, including TSMC, use equipment made by U.S. companies.

Currently, at least, there is no production line in China that uses equipment made solely in China. What this means is if the rule change will be signed by President Trump, who did not seem very keen on the proposal last month.

If the rule change is confirmed, however, it could end up hurting not just Huawei’s smartphone business but also U.S. companies that supply chips to the Chinese firm.

nanaoseiike Osei-Nantwi Isaac popularly known as Nanaoseiike is a Ghanaian, a husband, a teacher by choice and a blogger by passion. Osei is a website developer whose hobbies are playing the guitar and listening to country music. Nanaoseiike is a tech enthusiast. See author's posts