
America is determined to sink Huawei - enedil
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2020/05/21/america-is-determined-to-sink-huawei
======
eganist
This may be a bit of pro-USA or pro-Western favoritism on my part, but if a
company is getting away with illicitly gaining access to trade secrets in
order to build a competitive advantage while shielded by its home country (not
the best example, but t-mobile v. huawei - I imagine plenty of others are
classified), is it in-scope for opposing nations to destabilize the company
responsible for doing so?

~~~
the-dude
How about a company leveraging its monopoly on operating systems to illicitly
gain an advantage in other markets, say ... webbrowsers?

Should we nuke them?

~~~
ciarannolan
Companies who make a web browser and a company that builds the hardware
backbone of a nation's internet are not even comparable.

~~~
eganist
Tangential conversation, but I might actually disagree with you there. The
modern web browser is the gateway to easily the vast majority of content
consumption and creation tools currently in existence. They can be compared in
terms of whether control of such can sway the balance of power in a grander
scheme.

~~~
Robotbeat
The web browser is easier to replace than almost any of those things, though.
I regularly use 2 or even 3 different web browsers on the same computer and
another on my phone. If Chrome went away, there’d Be basically no impact on my
life. Same not true for operating systems as it’s harder to switch.

~~~
ardy42
> The web browser is easier to replace than almost any of those things,
> though. I regularly use 2 or even 3 different web browsers on the same
> computer and another on my phone. If Chrome went away, there’d Be basically
> no impact on my life. Same not true for operating systems as it’s harder to
> switch.

I'm not so sure. Yeah you could fork Chromium or Firefox (the only two
browsers left), but "web standards" have ballooned and gotten so bloated that
you'd need a pretty significant engineering organization to manage to support
it yourself.

------
ThalesX
I need to start by saying that I live in a country that's a member state of
the European Union. I also need to add that I am in no way a fan of China, or
the US of A, or any nation state or federal state for all that matter.

Now that's out of the way, what I am a fan of is fighting _for_ something
instead of fighting _against_ something. I don't believe or understand this
narrative of fighting China. We've been outsourcing everything to China in the
last two decades, we've helped a billion of their people come out of poverty
and we've helped them build infrastructure that we only dream of. Now that
they're a major power, we're starting to declare all sorts of wars on them.
What if, instead of doing all these economic, military and other types of
warfare, we would focus, together or alone (as states) in excelling. In
building the best tech, in building the most awesome factories, in having the
best quality of life for our people?

What if instead of declaring war on China and moving our production to South
East Asia or Africa and then helping them grow out of poverty while extracting
as much value as we can (and then in the future we declare wars on them as
they gain a foothold in the globalized economy), we help ourselves be awesome
and in the process help South East Asia, and Africa, and whoever else can get
into a win-win situation?

I guess I'm a bit tired of this anti-China rhetoric sprouting up on Western
social media. It's a classic case of identifying a 'common enemy' so that our
people can be sheeped into whatever the powers that be want them to be sheeped
into.

~~~
snogaraleal
The problem with China is that it has taken a hostile non-cooperative
approach, ie it’s acting in bad faith. This is evidenced by its diplomatic
failures with the region and with the world. The CCP is using economic
leverage to coerce smaller players in the global system. The US has its hands
tied here, there really are no other options geopolitically.

I live in Europe as well, and sometimes it feels like European leadership is
extremely confused: EU is a shitshow that nobody seems to be able to lead
(just look at how long it took for agreeing on debt mutualization/Eurobond,
Brexit, VDL apologizing to Italy, etc), Germany working with Russia on Nord
stream 2 after its actions in Ukraine, Sweden pretending like the lax virus
approach has nothing to do with its hyper leveraged banks and heavily indebted
households, list goes on... and all we can do is entertain ourselves by making
fun of Trump. We are a joke, we can’t even keep our union together. We can’t
even pay for our military because daddy America has to foot the bill and if
they don’t our European leaders start whining about lack of US leadership.

The US Fed had enough vision to extend the dollar swap lines to more central
banks including the Swedish central bank. For the ECB there is a permanent
arrangement. Despite the “tough love“ we Europeans are getting on trade from
the US, ultimately Europe will soon enough realize the US is its best ally.

We just want freedom and fair economic practices. We won’t get it if we let
China play communist game theory with the only planet we have.

~~~
kaveh_h
DJT fucked both US and EU when it started to create a wedge with trade tariffs
and other issues. Instead of strengthening EU and US ties he weakened it and
gives china more space to operate in.

China can play any games it wants when the rest of us are locked on making
cheap political points by pointing finger at eachothers inadequate response to
this pandemic.

~~~
snogaraleal
What are you talking about? The EU runs a current account surplus with the US,
and it's a protectorate of the US through NATO. Europe is absolutely
delusional and ungrateful.

~~~
kaveh_h
I didn’t down vote you.

Multinational companies are not bringing profits home. This was perhaps the
best decision Trump made was to even the playing field and brought it down to
about the same as most EU countries.

Europe is a much larger population but it’s not as rich as US per capita so
don’t expect europeans to buy more US goods. I agree that sometimes the
tariffs are too high. But the situation is more complex. VAT in Sweden is 25%,
a Tesla Model S cost about 100k$ here because of VAT mainly not just tariffs.
Many US products are simply too expensive for the same reasons and a Europea
generally lower purchase power. Americans like to buy European luxury goods
many europeans themselves can’t buy. Trade is not a single transaction. I
would love to own Tesla or buy more american, but I can only afford iPhone not
Tesla. And iPhones are made in China...

Nato has protected EU, but not against the refugee crisis which affect EU much
more than US. US seems to infact increased the problems and is simply trying
to leave now. US cares about mexican immigration but don’t do much to help
situation in ME.

~~~
snogaraleal
The US manufacturing produces things that Europeans can buy, but in some
instances US companies can't compete with their heavily subsidized European
counterparts.

At some point Trump got angry at us and said "OK no tariffs, but ALSO no
subsidies". Obviously Europe didn't agree, and the US put tariffs in place.

All this is logical, I get it that Trump is hyperbolical and extreme, but he's
not that crazy.

------
ccmcarey
> It announced new rules that target Huawei’s in-house microchips, which power
> many of the firm’s products. The rules are aimed at the factories that take
> such designs and turn them into working silicon, such as those owned by TSMC
> in Taiwan and SMIC in China.

Out of curiosity, what's the legal basis for this? Is it just a threat, and if
companines like TSMC don't follow it, they'll also be blacklisted from the US
market?

~~~
enitihas
Can the US afford to blacklist TSMC from anything?

~~~
KCUOJJQJ
From [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/trump-tsmc-
us-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/technology/trump-tsmc-us-chip-
facility.html)

 _Mark Liu, T.S.M.C.’s chairman, told The New York Times in October that
T.S.M.C. had been negotiating with the Commerce Department about a possible
U.S. plant, but said it would require substantial government subsidies. How
much, if any, public money might be associated with the company’s decision was
unclear._

And from [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-48917705](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48917705)

 _The US State Department has approved a potential arms sale to Taiwan,
estimated to be worth $2.2bn (£1.76bn), the Pentagon said._

Maybe TSMC thought it would be really good if Tawain were protected better
thanks to these weapons, and TSMC would also like these subsidies.

------
duxup
[https://outline.com/cxJ47a](https://outline.com/cxJ47a)

Is there a link to what this new rule, is exactly?

The article states it in one line but doesn't reference it beyond that.

~~~
elliekelly
I think it’s this rule.[1] The Commerce Department’s press release[2]
summarizes the new rule/licensing requirements.

[1][https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/05/19/2020-10...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/05/19/2020-10856/export-
administration-regulations-amendments-to-general-prohibition-three-foreign-
produced-direct)

[2][https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-
releases/2020/05/commerc...](https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-
releases/2020/05/commerce-addresses-huaweis-efforts-undermine-entity-list-
restricts)

------
BitwiseFool
That's going to be awfully hard to do since we decided it was better to make
things overseas because it's cheaper and we didn't have to pay so many in-
house engineers.

~~~
BobbyJo
We make the things that make the things though, so if we just don't ship the
meta-machines over seas, we'll be fine.

------
aazaa
I'm curious what the perceived endgame is here.

Is it to sink a specific company? Send a message to a country with clear
military aspirations? Reshore the semiconductor industry? Play to the
president's political base? What?

If the goal is to reshore the semiconductor manufacturing industry, that's not
going to work. Every country will have a competitive advantage in
manufacturing against the US for as long as it prints the global reserve
currency.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma)

~~~
NonEUCitizen
November elections.

------
sand_castles
I know many ppl are going to defend "America" here.

But remember who you are defending.

Great power rivalry is bad for corporate profit and amazing for wage laborer,
which most of HN is.

If you are an worker in North America, this type of headline should be a
moment of celebration.

~~~
luckydata
Healthy business rivalry is good, systematic theft and cloning of superior
products is what we’re talking about here and huawei absolutely deserves the
“corporate death penalty” for its behavior.

~~~
ddoolin
What if the Chinese government is working overtime to prevent the superior
companies from reaching their markets? Should the Chinese people be stuck with
inferior products? I'm not condoning it at all but this is about more than
just Huawei. China is doing this with more than just Huawei, anyway, just take
a look at what COMAC has been doing.

~~~
luckydata
That's a losing battle, there's no point in fighting for the Chinese market
since it's not a real market. The winner there will always be a state
controlled entity until the political environment changes. But Chinese
companies should absolutely be barred from doing business outside of China as
their influence is toxic to democracy and freedom.

When things change, so I will change my mind.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
2017 revenue from China (USD):

* Apple: 44.8 Billion

* Intel: 14.8 Billion

* Qualcomm: 14.6 Billion

* Boeing: 11.9 Billion

* Micron Technology: 10.4 Billion

Based on [1].

Meanwhile, "Europe's listed firms expect to glean $514 billion in revenue from
China."[2]

I just don't understand where people get this idea that Western companies
can't do business in China. They have a massive presence in China, unmatched
by the presence of any Chinese company in the US or Europe.

1\. [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trade-war-watch-these-
are-...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trade-war-watch-these-are-the-us-
companies-with-the-most-at-stake-in-china-2018-03-29) 2\.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-markets-
eu/euro...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-markets-eu/europes-
listed-firms-expect-to-glean-514-billion-in-revenue-from-china-idUSKCN1PN19H)

~~~
luckydata
As long as they accept to get their IP cloned, hurt people and ignore
consequences. It's a well remunerated pound of flesh.

------
asadhaider
Unpaywalled archive: [https://archive.is/qolrV](https://archive.is/qolrV)

~~~
iso947
Certificate error

------
tacheiordache
It seems like HUAWEI was determined to eat everybody's lunch in the first
place and that was in large part a plan backed by the Communist Party in
China. It seems that this is the backed response from the west, at least for
America.

Let China develop their own technology and then we'll see a different story
and nothing will stop them from taking over the world, by excellence not by
IP-theft and benefit from others research. On the other I was quite happy to
see China rising out of the poverty. It would have been a good counterbalance
to the western Capitalistic world. Unfortunately they played the same game but
with different weapons: cheap labor, IP theft and large pools of talent to
pick from. Maybe the obedience of Chinese played a role behind this growth for
they all benefited. However, since Xi's rise to power the ambition to dominate
Asia with a fist only grew. I hope the Chinese people don't loose the
opportunity to change their future for the better.

------
sophieRu
The issue with Huawei is that they are actually 4 years ahead in terms of
infrastructure technology compared to any american company.

~~~
Nokinside
American companies are not behind, they don't exist.

US companies can't compete in the market where they don't exist. Qualcomm
sells components, not mobile networks. There are only four big companies left
for for 4G/LTE/5G mobile infrastructure:

    
    
        COMPANY   MARKET SHARE
        Huawei    28%
        Ericsson  27%
        Nokia     23%
        ZTE       13%
        Samsung    3%

~~~
rumanator
Market share is not very telling in case of Huawei, as they're notorious for
dumping expensed by subsidies awarded by the Chinese regime.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Huawei)

If the Chinese regime throws cash at a company to buy themselves into a
dominant position to play their role in a geopolitical game, market share
means nothing.

------
rafaelreinert
U.S.A, not America, here in Brazil we haven’t any issue with Huawei

~~~
vinay427
This again? I think your point is appropriate when speaking Spanish,
Portuguese (EDIT: not Portuguese), etc. However, in common English (no, not
just in the US) the word "America" more often refers to the USA. Languages
don't use the same or derivative words for many other countries as well.

~~~
TMWNN
Not even in Portuguese. "Americano" specifically means "someone from the
United States". Spanish is the _only_ major European language in which its
local equivalent of "America/American" does not refer specifically to the USA.

~~~
vinay427
Thank you, apologies and I've edited my comment.

