FedEx Corp sued the US government on Monday. The parcel delivery company said that it should not be responsible for unintentionally shipping products that breach the administration’s ban on exported products to several Chinese businesses.
This decision resulted after FedEx revived Chinese outrage last week over its business policies after a parcel that contained a Huawei phone mailed to the US was returned to the sender located in Great Britain. FedEx called this incident an operational error. The parcel company fears that China would place FedEx on blacklist resulting in the company’s shares plummeting to 2.7% on Monday.
This delivery error came after the heightening tension between China and the United States. The two superpowers are locked in a trade disagreement for almost a year regarding issues like tariffs, technology, security, and regulations. As a result of this, the United States Commerce Department has prohibited Chinese companies from purchasing US technology.
According to court filings by FedEx in the District of Columbia, the company should be exempted from promoting the ban and should not be held responsible for shipping parcels containing products that it has no knowledge about.
The restriction rules on export fundamentally represent FedEx to monitor the contents of millions of deliveries that it ships every day despite being an impossible activity. In most cases, this is logistically and economically, as well as legally impossible to do.
A US Department of Commerce representative responded to FedEx filing saying that they have not reviewed its complaint. They are also looking forward to “Commerce’s role in protecting US national security.”
Huawei Technologies Co was included to the companies and people branded as “Entity List” in May. The Chinese tech company was considered a potential risk to the US and was banned from purchasing US technology, which it badly needed.
Meanwhile, China has also created its version of the “Entity List.” According to a recent report, FedEx will likely be included to this list due to the incident.
China announced last month that it would start an investigation on the two shipments that were sent through FedEx last month. These parcels were addressed to Huawei’s offices in Asia but were diverted to the US. FedEx claimed that these were not intentional and where merely misrouted errors.
Online technology news site PCMag attested to FedEx’s claim saying that one of its writers located in the UK tried to send a mobile phone Huawei P30 to a friend found in the United States. The PCMag writer said that FedEx refused the package and returned it saying that due to a United States government issue with the Chinese government and Huawei, it is unable to send the parcel.
