Asus won’t say how it secured an exemption from the US router ban

The United States has barred future imports of foreign-made consumer routers unless manufacturers convince the government they are not a national security threat and submit a detailed, time-bound plan to establish or expand manufacturing in the country.

As of September 9, Asus has an exemption covering all of its future routers through March 2028. The exemption came as Asus prepared to bring its first early Wi-Fi 8 routers to the US. The company has not publicly announced plans to manufacture routers there, and it would not tell The Verge whether it submitted a US manufacturing plan.

Asus spokesperson JJ Guerrero initially told The Verge that the company had submitted the required plan to the FCC and was working with manufacturing partners to support its future US networking products. Asus did not clarify whether the plan covered manufacturing in the United States or products intended for the US market. The Verge said it had waited more than 12 days for clarification.

The Verge reports that the FCC’s exemption process does not ask companies security questions and that the FCC did not respond to its request for comment or fact-check request. Asus says it passed a “rigorous cybersecurity review” and calls itself a “Trusted Networking Equipment Brand” and “Trusted Consumer Router Vendor”; the article says searches for those phrases returned only Asus claims, not federal government references.