U.S. Com­merce Sec­re­tary Wilbur Ross said Sun­day that licens­es for U.S. com­pa­nies to do busi­ness with Chi­na’s Huawei Tech­nolo­gies Inc. will be com­ing “very short­ly” and expressed opti­mism about a U.S.-China trade deal. Speak­ing with Bloomberg Tele­vi­sion in Bangkok, Thai­land, as he attend­ed the ASEAN sum­mit, Ross said that while it was pos­si­ble the “phase one” deal might not be ready to be signed this month, “We’re in good shape, we’re mak­ing good progress, and there’s no nat­ur­al rea­son why it could­n’t be.” Ross offered Iowa, Hawaii and Alas­ka as pos­si­ble sites for a meet­ing between Pres­i­dents Don­ald Trump and Xi Jin­ping to sign the deal. Ross told Bloomberg that 260 U.S. com­pa­nies had applied for licens­es to sell to Huawei. “That’s a lot of appli­ca­tions — it’s frankly more than we would’ve thought,” he said. The U.S. black­list­ed Huawei in May, and has delayed issu­ing licens­es to do busi­ness with it since sum­mer. In July, Trump said the licens­ing process would be done in a “time­ly” fash­ion.