Following a report this morning from Reuters that Chinese tech giant Huawei planned to move into the electric vehicle market, Andy Purdy, chief security officer for the company's U.S. division, refuted that it would be manufacturing cars of its own.
"We're not, as a recent report said, going to be manufacturing our own electric cars," Purdy told Cheddar. However, he said the company would develop automotive computer systems.
The report comes amid Huawei's ongoing efforts to improve relations with the U.S. after the Trump administration imposed sanctions that cut the company off from a vital supply of semiconductors. The former administration also pursued criminal charges against Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei and daughter of the company founder, who has been under house arrest in Canada for the last two years as she fights extradition.
"We hope the Biden administration disaggregates those issues and focuses on them one-by-one," Purdy said.
He also stressed that 40,000 American jobs were on the table, which was his rough calculation of how many jobs were created by Huawei's annual purchase of 12 billion semiconductors prior to 2019, the year it bought 18 billion in order to stockpile ahead of the sanctions.
"If in the long-term, we and other companies are not allowed to buy those chips, those jobs will leave America forever," he said.
The sanctions knocked $20 billion off Huawei's revenue in 2019, he added, and that the company will announce soon what the damage was in 2020.
"We do know that we're in the black for revenue and profit for 2020, which is a good thing, but we're hurting badly and we're going to continue to hurt for the foreseeable future," Purdy explained.
An independent watchdog within the IRS reports that while taxpayer services have vastly improved, the agency is still too slow to resolve identity theft cases. And National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins says those delays are “unconscionable.” Erin M. Collins said in the report released Wednesday that overall the 2024 filing season went smoothly, though IRS delays in resolving identity theft victim assistance cases are worsening. It took nearly 19 months to resolve self-reported identity theft cases as of January, and Wednesday's report states that now it takes 22 months to resolve these cases.
Amazon.com Inc. surpassed $2 trillion in market value for the first time in afternoon trading on Wednesday. The push higher for Amazon’s stock market valuation comes a little more than a week after Nvidia hit $3 trillion and briefly became the most valuable company on Wall Street. Nvidia’s chips are used to power many AI application and its valuation has soared as a result. Amazon has also been making big investments in AI as global interest has grown in the technology. Most of the company’s focus has been on business-focused products.
Climate change doesn’t just mean more extreme weather – it also leads to billions of dollars in lost productivity, tourism, and stresses infrastructure.
