Advertisement
U.S. markets open in 3 hours 40 minutes
  • S&P Futures

    5,206.75
    -8.00 (-0.15%)
     
  • Dow Futures

    39,181.00
    -42.00 (-0.11%)
     
  • Nasdaq Futures

    18,198.50
    -33.00 (-0.18%)
     
  • Russell 2000 Futures

    2,043.00
    -6.80 (-0.33%)
     
  • Crude Oil

    82.47
    -0.25 (-0.30%)
     
  • Gold

    2,157.40
    -6.90 (-0.32%)
     
  • Silver

    25.12
    -0.14 (-0.57%)
     
  • EUR/USD

    1.0840
    -0.0037 (-0.34%)
     
  • 10-Yr Bond

    4.3400
    0.0000 (0.00%)
     
  • Vix

    14.58
    +0.25 (+1.74%)
     
  • GBP/USD

    1.2671
    -0.0057 (-0.45%)
     
  • USD/JPY

    150.6230
    +1.5250 (+1.02%)
     
  • Bitcoin USD

    63,776.72
    -4,204.75 (-6.19%)
     
  • CMC Crypto 200

    885.54
    0.00 (0.00%)
     
  • FTSE 100

    7,718.47
    -4.08 (-0.05%)
     
  • Nikkei 225

    40,003.60
    +263.20 (+0.66%)
     

Huawei donates six million masks to Canada amid worsening COVID-19 outbreak

Huawei has promised to donate six million masks to Canada amid the nation's worsening COVID-19 outbreak. Yahoo! Finance's Akiko Fujita joins The Final Round to discuss.

Video Transcript

MYLES UDLAND: All right, speaking of China and where they fit into all this, Akiko Fujita, we have kind of an interesting story here with Huawei and Canada. And I think it-- you know, so this is about Huawei trying to maybe perhaps just soften the Canadian government's stance towards that company. Because, you know, if we go back a year or two, Huawei's in the crosshairs of a number of Western governments with what they're doing with 5G, what their equipment is and is not doing.

And I think that they're playing a longer game here and realizing there's going to be another side to this. And we would love to not continue to face the regulatory pressure that we're facing in the US and Canada when this is all over.

AKIKO FUJITA: Yeah, Myles, I think I'm going to call this one masked diplomacy. But it's certainly interesting to see how China has played its cards, not just Huawei but Chinese companies and the Chinese government, since they have kind of gone past the peak of the virus in China and now seen this spread around the world.

So let's first talk about Huawei. This is a story from the Global Mail over in Canada, saying that Huawei has now donated more than a million masks, 30,000 goggles, 50,000 pairs of gloves. And they plan to donate up to 6 million masks to Canada. Now Huawei, of course, would say that this is all just to try and help the effort.

But of course, we want to look at this cynically, at a time when we always trying to get into the good graces of the Canadians on a few things. Number one, CFO Meng Wanzhou still in Canada. Remember she was arrested back in 2018. She is still looking for release there, so there's that.

There's also the timing of all of this. Huawei at the moment seeking key federal approval to install 5G technology. So the cynical take on this would be that Huawei's trying to get in the good graces of the government.

Now I do think it's interesting that Huawei's not the only company that has been doing this. Jack Ma, of course, recently just joined Twitter to announce that he would be donating a million masks-- by the way, his first tweet announcing that-- to the US. And you've got companies like Tencent, who have set up a $100 million Global Fund to tackle the virus, China's largest real estate company coming up with more than $100 million to fund towards research.

So the Chinese, no question, after what played out in January and February, are now trying to use this in some way as a diplomatic tool, you could argue. One of the things that I do think it's important to note in discussing this, though, is that China does hold a lot of cards and all of this as we hear, here in the US and countries in Europe, trying to scramble to get some of these supplies.

And these are numbers from the Department of Health and Human Services-- 95% of surgical masks, 70% of respirators are manufactured overseas, a large chunk of that in China. So China understands that right now, they can be sort of the humanitarian and come forward on this and hopefully find ways to leverage some of these ties by donating these supplies.

MYLES UDLAND: Yeah, and I guess once the supplies are no longer needed, China still has a lot of explaining to do about what exactly happened with all this. And I think maybe that is also an attempt to get in front of some of those questions.

Advertisement