Asus won’t say how it escaped the US router ban
Asus has received an exemption from a U.S. ban on foreign-made routers, but the company has not clarified if it plans to establish domestic manufacturing as required by the policy. The article questions the transparency of the FCC's exemption process and the true intent behind the router ban.
Why it matters
The lack of transparency regarding manufacturing requirements raises questions about the enforcement of national security and trade policies in the tech sector.
This spring, the United States banned all future foreign-made consumer routers — effectively all future routers — unless their makers could 1) convince the US government that they weren’t a national security threat, and 2) submit “a detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the United States.”
As of September 9th, Asus now has an exemption from the ban, just in time to bring its first early Wi-Fi 8 routers here. But Asus has not publicly announced any plan to bring manufacturing to the US. It would not even confirm to The Verge whether it had submitted a US manufacturing plan.
Initially, Asus spokesperson JJ Guerrero forwarded the following statement to The Verge: “ASUS has submitted the required plan to the FCC and is working with trusted manufacturing partners to support our future networking product portfolio in the U.S.”
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