China wants FedEx to explain why Huawei package was not shipped to US
China demanded an explanation from FedEx on Monday after the company apologized for not shipping a Huawei package destined for the United States.
China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the shipping company should offer an explanation after FedEx released a statement saying an “operational error” was to blame for the package not being shipped to the U.S., Reuters reported. On Friday, PCMag said FedEx refused to ship a package that reportedly contained a Huawei phone. The parcel, which was shipped from Britain and bound for the U.S., was ultimately returned after spending about five hours in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Huawei slammed FedEx in a tweet, saying the company has a “vendetta” against the Chinese tech giant.
“Was FedEx within its rights to prevent a P30 Pro from being delivered from the UK to the U.S? No. Representatives from #Huawei, UPS and PCMag slam the courier’s vendetta. #HuaweiFacts,” the tech firm wrote on Twitter Sunday.
FedEx told FOX Business that the company can ship Huawei products "except for any shipments to listed Huawei entities on the U.S. Entity List." The "return to sender" label on the PCMag package was not generated by FedEx, the company added.
“The package in question was mistakenly returned to the shipper, and we apologize for this operational error," FedEx said in a statement Monday.
"As a global company that moves 15 million shipments each day, we are committed to compliance with all rules and regulations and minimizing impact to our customers as we adjust our operations to comply with a dynamic U.S. regulatory environment," the company concluded its statement.
The incident comes less than a month after China launched an investigation into FedEx for diverting four packages containing paperwork sent out by Huawei to the shipping firm’s headquarters in Memphis, Tenn., instead of being delivered to Huawei offices in Asia. The shipping firm apologized and said the packages were misrouted accidentally, and they had not been instructed by anyone to do so.
The U.S. Commerce Department on Friday added five Chinese organizations involved in supercomputing with military-related applications to a so-called Entity List, effectively barring U.S. firms from selling technology to them without government approval. The five Chinese companies join Huawei on the list amid trade tensions between the U.S. and China.
China’s Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen said during a news conference on Monday that the U.S. should stop its “inappropriate measures” against Chinese companies.
“We hope the U.S. side, under the principles of free trade and the spirit of WTO (World Trade Organization) principles, can cancel these inappropriate measures against Chinese companies, and remove them from the entity list. This has benefits for both sides,” Wang said, according to CNBC.
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are also expected to meet during the G-20 Summit this weekend in Osaka, Japan, amid stalled trade talks. This would be the first time the leaders will confront each other face-to-face after Trump threatened to impose tariffs on another $300 billion worth of Chinese goods.
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Trump has already imposed 25 percent tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports and China has retaliated with tariffs on U.S. goods.
Fox Business' Thomas Barrabi and The Associated Press contributed to this report.