Blacklisted Chinese tech giant Huawei and video surveillance company Hikvision are among 20 companies owned or controlled by the Chinese military, the Trump administration alleged on Thursday.

Reuters reported on Thursday that the Department of Defense’s list of 20 Chinese companies linked to the People’s Liberation Army has provided U.S. President Donald Trump with enough ammunition for fresh financial sanctions against China, as relations between the two global powerhouses continue to worsen.

President Trump has the power to invoke the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to cut off these 20 companies from the U.S. financial system, according to the document’s publisher Axios.

Other PLA-linked companies include China Railway Construction Corporation, China Telecommunications Corporation, CRRC Corp., China Mobile Communications Group, as well as a number of aerospace and aviation companies.

Under a 1999 U.S. law, the Defense Department is required to compile a list of companies operating in the U.S. that are “owned or controlled” by the People’s Liberation Army, and that provide commercial services, manufacture, produce or export. This list has never been published until now.

China affairs expert Willy Lam said the Trump administration is gearing up to strike further, as the companies on the list are the flagships of China’s national defence, security, aviation and aerospace. Some of these companies have also been active in China’s Belt and Road initiatives, he said.

Lam, also an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, told Apple Daily that the U.S. already vowed to sanction other Chinese corporations besides Huawei and ZTE. He said the list’s publication had proved that last week’s meeting in Hawaii between Yang Jiechi, Chinese Communist Party Office of Foreign Affairs Director, and Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, reached no conclusion.

Lam added that China has become an important target for Trump’s re-election campaign, and it is possible that Trump will raise his stakes and push for further sanctions against China in an attempt to boost his chances in November’s U.S presidential election.

But the revelation of the list did not bring immediate sanctions to these Chinese companies, and the Trump administration might take advantage of this in further negotiations with China by waiting for Beijing to make the first move, Lam said.

Derek Scissors, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told Bloomberg that the U.S. government should’ve known early on about which Chinese companies were linked with the PLA, but if no U.S action was taken against them, then the publication of the list was only a gesture to counter allegations made by former National Security Advisor John Bolton against President Trump. In his new book about his experience inside the Trump White House, Bolton has alleged that Trump solicited Chinese President Xi Jinping’s assistance to help win his re-election. This has been denied by Trump.

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