FedEx, a US-based courier company is suing the U.S. government claiming that the company should not be held liable in case the company inadvertently shipped products that violated a Trump administration ban on exports to select Chinese companies.
In court filings in the District of Columbia, the company said it should not be expected to enforce the export ban, and could not reasonably be held liable for shipping products that it did not know about.
In the filing, the company said that the export restriction rules “essentially deputize FedEx to police the contents of the millions of packages it ships daily even though doing so is a virtually impossible task, logistically, economically, and in many cases, legally.”
In response, a U.S. Commerce Department spokesman said that “We have not yet reviewed the complaint, but nevertheless look forward to defending Commerce’s role in protecting U.S. national security.”
The U.S. Commerce Department has banned a number of Chinese firms in recent weeks from buying sensitive U.S. technology. Among them is the Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies which was added to the U.S. “Entity List”, barring it from buying U.S. technology upon which the company was heavily reliant.
This development comes after the company started drawing ire from China yet again related to its business practices. Last week, a package containing a Huawei smartphone sent to the United States was returned to its sender in Britain. The package was returned by the company because of a “U.S. government issue” but the company later described this incident as an “operational error.”
Last month, two parcels sent via FedEx destined for Huawei addresses in Asia were rerouted to the United States by the courier company. FedEx said the packages were “misrouted in error.” China has already launched an investigation over this matter.
FedEx has said that it would deliver all products made by Huawei to addresses other than those of Huawei and affiliates on the U.S. blacklist. United Parcel Service also said that it would not ship to Huawei addresses on the Entity List but confirmed that there’s no “general ban” on Huawei products.
However, a Huawei spokesman has said that the company has currently stopped FedEx or UPS services. Recently, Huawei took to Twitter to say that it was not within FedEx’s right to prevent the delivery and said the courier had a “vendetta.” China’s foreign ministry asked for a full explanation regarding this.
