Washington: The Trump administration on Monday announced it will further tighten restrictions on Huawei Technologies, aimed at cracking down on its access to commercially available chips.

The US Commerce Department actions expand restrictions announced in May aimed at preventing the Chinese telecommunications giant from obtaining semiconductors without a special license - including chips made by foreign firms that have been developed or produced with US software or technology.

The administration also added 38 Huawei affiliates in 21 countries to the US government's economic blacklist, the sources said, raising the total to 152 affiliates since Huawei was first added in May 2019.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business the restrictions on Huawei-designed chips imposed in May "led them to do some evasive measures. They were going through third parties," Ross said.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a tweet that the US government "dealt a direct blow to Huawei and the repressive Chinese Communist Party by further limiting Huawei’s ability to acquire US technology and compromise the integrity of the world’s networks and Americans’ private information."

With US-China relations at their worst in decades, Washington is pushing governments around to world to squeeze out Huawei, arguing it would hand over data to the Chinese government for spying. Huawei denies it spies for China.

In an appearance on Fox on Monday, President Donald Trump accused Huawei, without evidence, of spying on Americans. "We don’t want their equipment in the United States because they spy on us," Trump said.

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