FedEx is being investigated by the Chinese government after ‘diverting’ documents belonging to Huawei in a move seen as retaliation for US President Trump’s actions against the Chinese technology group and as bilateral trade tensions escalate.
The US express giant, which last week already apologised for its error, has pledged to cooperate fully with Chinese authorities.
The row comes after President Trump blacklisted Huawei over allegations it is using its 5G broadband network to spy on behalf of the Chinese government and ordered US firms to stop buying parts from the Chinese company without US government approval. Huawei denies the spying claims.
The Chinese commerce ministry announced on Friday that it would draw up a list of “unreliable” foreign companies. On Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported that the government would investigate whether FedEx had damaged the interests of Chinese customers.
In response, FedEx issued a statement saying: “FedEx values our business in China. Our relationship with Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. and our relationships with all of our customers in China are important to us. FedEx holds itself to a very high standard of service. FedEx will fully cooperate with any regulatory investigation into how we serve our customers.”
Huawei said last week that it is reviewing its dealings with FedEx after the US transportation giant diverted to the US two parcels that were due to be shipped from Japan to China, and also attempted to divert two other packages scheduled to be sent from Vietnam to company offices in Hong Kong and Singapore. All four packages contained documents and “no technology”, according to the Chinese group.
A Huawei spokesman, Joe Kelly, was cited by Reuters as saying: “The recent experiences where important commercial documents sent via FedEx were not delivered to their destination, and instead were either diverted to, or were requested to be diverted to, FedEx in the United States, undermines our confidence.” He added: “We will now have to review our logistics and document delivery support requirements as a direct result of these incidents.”
A FedEx spokeswoman told CEP-Research last week: “We value all of our customers who entrust more than 15 million packages a day with us. We regret that this isolated number of Huawei packages were inadvertently misrouted and confirm that they are in the process of being returned to the shippers. The scans on the packages will show that we worked to return the packages to our customers as soon as possible.”
The dispute over the ‘diverted’ Huawei packages comes after President Trump last month imposed higher tariffs on about half of all US imports from China, worth about US$250 billion. In response, Beijing has now raised tariffs on about US$60 billion worth of imports from the US.
