Some of Huawei’s top U.S. executives shifted their tone this week on the company’s U.S. outlook. 

The world’s largest telecommunications equipment vendor has been besieged by a widening campaign led by the U.S. government and some of its allies. Huawei’s U.S. representatives are starting to resign themselves to the fallout of those efforts, at least at a level the company hasn’t heretofore entertained publicly.

“We don’t necessarily have any ambition in the U.S. market just because this is such a challenging environment,” Joy Tan, SVP of public affairs at Huawei USA, said during a group video conference with U.S.-based journalists. 

“We will continue to support customers we’ve had in this market until they have to take our equipment out of their network," she explained. "I think the rip-and-replace [effort] is being implemented right now but it’s going to take some time. So during the meantime, we’ll continue to support these customers until our contract runs out. That’s our commitment to these rural customers." 

Tim Danks, VP of risk management and partner relations at Huawei USA, expanded on that sentiment. “Although we’re facing challenges here, we’ve built long-term relationships with these customers. They trust us, we trust them, and we’ll continue to support them until that very last piece of gear is taken out of the network, and support them through any efforts that they need during that transition. So they can rest assured that we have their backs despite the challenges that we face in this market,” he said.

“Give it some time and I’m hopeful that we’ll make a nice big return to the U.S. market eventually,” Danks added.

Danks also argued that the removal of Huawei gear from America’s rural communities could result in them becoming less connected and widening the digital divide. “If you look at our history in the U.S., we’ve got over 20,000 deployed nodes across the U.S. in all markets, but primarily in the rural markets, and we’ve been in operation here, serving those markets for 15 years,” he said. 

“We’ve never had a single security incident ever, and yet we’re some kind of a security risk,” according to the U.S. government, he said. “When push comes to shove, the meat is not there for supporting security issues and so on, but what is there is politics, and trade negotiations, and global theatrics. That’s underpinning a lot of the efforts against Huawei.”

Most of Huawei’s struggles of late can be attributed to a series of moves intended to define the company as an agent for the Chinese government. The company has also been accused of espionage, trade secret theft, sanctions violations, and significant security vulnerabilities in its software. 

The COVID-19 crisis has also been negatively impacted the company. And Huawei executives admitted last month during its annual analyst summit that expanding trade bans imposed after the Commerce Department placed the company on an entity list are also beginning to damage the company’s outlook.

Huawei is still working through legal channels in a bid to get removed from the entity list, but it hasn’t thus far had much success taking that route. Earlier this year, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Huawei that challenged the constitutionality of a law that bans the U.S. government, its contractors, and suppliers from purchasing the vendor’s equipment and service. 

In the meantime, “fortunately we’ve had this temporary general license approved by the Commerce Department to allow entities to apply for licenses so that they can continue to supply Huawei without any concern,” said Dennis Amari, director of federal and regulatory affairs at Huawei USA. “It’s been extended five times I believe now. It currently runs through the middle of August, and the Commerce Department has indicated that may be the last time that they renew, but we won’t know until we get to the deadline.”

Separately, the Commerce Department earlier this month also issued a rule to allow any U.S.-based entity or person to “participate in standards bodies where Huawei is also participating without any concern about being in violation of the entity list and their ability to share technology and information with Huawei,” Amari said. 

Heading into the presidential election in November, “I do worry that the Trump administration, in a way to look stronger in their response to issues around China, will take it out on Huawei, but resolving anything is not going to happen before the election,” he added. 

Huawei also provided an update on its 5G business, indicating that more than half of its signed agreements with operators are in Europe. “Globally, Huawei has signed 91 commercial 5G contracts with different operators around the world, and out of that 91, I think 47 is from Europe and 27 is from [the Asia-Pacific region],” Tan said. “We have delivered 600,000 base stations til today and we’re supporting 49 live networks.”

While the company is also facing challenges in Europe, the limitations imposed on Huawei there have been more muted. The United Kingdom earlier this year gave its operators approval to use a limited set of equipment from Huawei to help construct their 5G and 4G LTE networks, even after the country’s National Cyber Security Centre decreed the company as a “high risk vendor.”

U.S. government representatives have lambasted that move and quickly responded in kind again this week when Huawei gained approval to build a $1.24 billion chip research and manufacturing facility in the U.K.

The State Department again levied the charge that Huawei is “subject to an authoritarian government” and can’t be trusted with access to sensitive information. “We urge all countries, particularly allies and partners like the United Kingdom, to carefully assess the long-term impact of allowing untrusted companies like Huawei access to sensitive information,” the agency said in a statement.