I get the impression that it's strategy to exclude competition that otherwise can't be beat.
You can't beat Huawei cell towers. You increasingly can't beat Huawei phones, which have become much better and cheaper than iPhones.
You can make up some story about it being spyware (while we have a mountain of proof that the US has spyware in Western devices...) and exclude them, also hoping that it will limit their advance. Of course, the opposite has happened, CHinese tech comapines have now rapidly gained the ability to sourse in-house (or in-country) what they used to import, leading to a tech jump through sanctions.
Otherwise the difference is in strategy. A toaster is geopolitical not so important, like communication infrastructure.