With the company currently being on the list, people in the US will soon no longer be able to purchase publicly traded Xiaomi securities.
Xiaomi has filed a legal action against the US Defense and Treasury departments that seeks to remove itself from the country’s official list of Communist Chinese military companies (CCMC). The Department of Defense added Xiaomi onto the list in mid-January after it accused the company of “appearing to be [a] civilian entity” in order to procure advanced technologies in support of the modernisation goals of the Chinese military. In the legal complaint [PDF], Xiaomi said it filed the lawsuit as the CCMC designation would cause “immediate and irreparable harm to Xiaomi”, including by cutting off Xiaomi’s access to US capital markets. It added that the restrictions would interfere with the company’s business relationships and ability to conduct and expand its business, as well as harm its reputation and goodwill among business partners and consumers, both in the United States and around the world. Companies placed on the CCMC list are subject to a Donald Trump executive order that came into force in November last year. The executive order prohibits US persons from trading and investing in any of the listed companies and bans trading in any new companies once the US has placed the CCMC label on them. As a result, people in the US will no longer be able to purchase publicly traded Xiaomi securities or derivatives of those securities from March 15 onwards and must divest any holdings by January 14 next year.
