
Trade War Has Damaged U.S. Chip Industry - ETHisso2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/27/technology/trade-war-chipmakers.html
======
bhouston
I am pretty sure that China is going to take a temporary hit but in the end
they will emerge stronger than ever. I think China will also redouble on their
efforts to be full self-sufficient in all high tech areas, even if they have
to open up for a sanction relief deal, their population will so favor local
competitors, that it won't matter.

China's rise will continue and dominant until their demographic bubble bursts
and they turn into Japan when a falling population. I am curious if China can
change course on its demographics in a way that Japan couldn't? Tech dominance
is all but assured but if the demographics issue isn't resolved, they will
clearly stagnant.

~~~
gambiting
Yes, I'm curious what might happen if China gets to a level where they have
the best tech, but are not interested in sharing it.

~~~
sangnoir
Going by history[1], I'd guess that the "respect for IP" by the west might get
a bit squishy, and become sacrosanct in China.

1\. Hollywood's current stance on IP has reversed from when it was founded and
actively undermining Edison's cinematography IP. Same goes for aircraft
engineering in France in light of the Wright brothers patent war, and the
inchoate American industry vs British IP.

~~~
jjwhitaker
Edison was ruthless about patents and their reach. There are many stories of
him sending men to confiscate camera and film from early directors/film makers
arguing he owned the content they created with "his" technology. He also
personally claimed the patents for many technologies invented at his firm vs
listing the actual inventor but keeping ownership and royalties to his firm
like today. He was a titan of inventing for sure and fostered an environment
where amazing things were created but would probably be considered incredibly
toxic in today's world.

------
pjc50
This is the thing that economists have been pointing out for decades: at the
country scale, allowing free trade provides productivity benefits to both
sides, and restricting it affects both sides. You can't have a trade war
without domestic casualties.

What's crazier is that the strategy of economically integrating China with the
world was a Rebublican economic-liberal one to start with. The plan was to
make the rest of the world look like America and be trading partners,
_providing markets for American companies_. Someone forgot the last bit.

~~~
tekkk
Well sure American and other companies have _tried_ to gain market share in
China, but China has effectively stifled a lot of foreign competitors from
entering. So it's not very symmetric free trade with China, therefore giving
some justification for this silly trade war.

It's understandable though from China's perspective, that they aren't willing
to give up important strategic sectors like social media or internet search to
some US corporation. Especially so with their intention of being a rivaling
global superpower to US one day. But it seems the economical aspect of
increasing the revenues of Chinese companies has been as important or even
more, which makes this practise more or less just cheating. Not that others
are playing always fair, but China seems to be doing it considerably more than
the others.

Just as an anecdote, AWS offers its Chinese region as a separately owned
Chinese company, completely separate from other AWS regions. To me it speaks
volumes how restrictive and hostile the Chinese market is to foreign
companies, can you imagine having to do the same for each country? It would be
a nightmare for global economy. [https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/13/aws-exits-
china/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/13/aws-exits-china/)

~~~
pm90
> To me it speaks volumes how restrictive and hostile the Chinese market is to
> foreign companies, can you imagine having to do the same for each country?

China is the most populated country on earth and an emerging superpower. They
have every right to consider themselves exceptional, just the way the US
considers itself exceptional.

To posit another angle: most international nations are smaller markets than
the US (individually) so it doesn't make sense to customize things for every
nation, which would be a goddamn nightmare. But this is a country of over 1.3
Billion people. China would need to be an exception anyway, and AWS having a
subsidiary in China doesn't illustrate the unfairness of China's practices as
much as the reality of how important that market really is.

~~~
rhino369
You are just rationalizing China’s purposeful one way trade barriers.

~~~
pm90
Explain to me how billions of dollars in subsidies for agriculture are not one
way trade barriers.

~~~
kazagistar
If all China was doing was investing in it's own industries and sponsoring
them, it would be very different from it's current policy of actually locking
out competitors who dont have a local presence and such. There is a steep
difference between positive economic assistance and negative legal barriers.

~~~
echaozh
Without a local presence, how can the business be hold responsible if there's
misdeed? US senators may even want to deny Huawei compensation for patent
infringement in the US.

------
apatters
Only 8.4% of US exports are to China, but the number is probably higher for
semiconductors. It would have been nice if the article had mentioned what that
number actually is.

~~~
mytailorisrich
Found this [0]: "The U.S. semiconductor industry generates 30 percent of total
revenue from China, with Qualcomm and Micron accruing more than half of sales
from trade with Beijing."

[0]: [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/us-china-tensions-put-
chipma...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/27/us-china-tensions-put-chipmakers-
apple-in-hot-water-ahead-of-g-20.html)

------
seren
I believe this not only affecting the US.

I still have not quite understood the deal around ARM, that will stop
cooperating with Huawei. This is a UK based company, owned by a Japanese
conglomerate, Softbank, but they were still affected because they have a
development center in Texas.

The logical conclusion would be that if you are a global company and want to
keep selling to China (or to whoever will get a trade ban or sanction), you
should not incorporate any US tech, or have US development teams. This seems
to be quite counterproductive from the US point of view, it means that
investing in the US expose you to additional risks.

~~~
geogra4
I think your last paragraph is very much missed by trump and his team.

~~~
mistermann
I'm curious what your thinking is behind this. Ok, maybe you're a believer in
the Trump's an idiot meme, fine, but do you actually think not a single person
on Trump's trade team understands that trade wars are a high risk undertaking,
that it might not be a complete cakewalk?

Take Robert Lighthizer for example:

[https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/22/china-japan-
lighth...](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/22/china-japan-lighthizer-
trump-602657)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/watch-robert-lighthizer-
test...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/18/watch-robert-lighthizer-testifies-to-
senate-about-trump-trade-agenda.html)

I wouldn't _for a moment_ think he doesn't understand the risks involved, so I
would be very interested to know what your thinking is...perhaps you're aware
of something I'm not?

EDIT: I find the pattern of pattern of downvoting on political topics
increasingly disappointing. The specific point of contention here is now
whether this trade war strategy will turn out to be a wise move, or could have
been executed in a more intelligent manner (I personally hold no certainty on
either), it is whether:

"The logical conclusion would be that if you are a global company and want to
keep selling to China (or to whoever will get a trade ban or sanction), you
should not incorporate any US tech, or have US development teams. This seems
to be quite counterproductive from the US point of view, it means that
investing in the US expose you to additional risks. "

...is very much missed by trump _and his team_.

From a "pedantically" logical perspective, I would interpret a downvote as a
belief that no one on Trump's team is able to understand or has not thought of
this (and many other obvious) possible negative consequences.

More likely I suspect I am reading way too much meaning into downvotes and the
actual sentiment is something more casual along the lines of "you're just
wrong", but the level of discourse, partisanship and epistemic humility on
such topics, often accompanied by an air of intellectual superiority, seems to
me like far less than what HN is capable of if we were able to set aside our
understandable frustrations. If we can't discuss these topics in a non-tribal,
evidence-based manner, _then how does one hold the belief that the general
public "should" do so_? I should also note that I'm far from guilt-free on
this matter, but I have been making a sincere effort to be more consistently
objective in such discussions, and I would hope that is reflected in my words,
provided one is able to set aside our differences in opinions.

~~~
maypeacepreva1l
I am curious how you justify your position by looking at few members of the
team. Trade is a complex issue and Trump single handedly is jeopardizing this
sensitive topic by openly declaring trade wars with multiple nations in open
platform like Twitter. Where were those members when that was and is still
happening?

~~~
mistermann
> I am curious how you justify your position by looking at few members of the
> team.

If you review my comment carefully, you may notice (especially prior to my
edit) that I haven't stated a particularly strong or distinct "position".
Rather, I was asking a specific question about the specific literal words of
someone else's stated position/belief.

I suspect that what has happened here in both cases is that subconscious
heuristics have automatically crunched massive amounts of data and formed an
evaluation in the asker's mind of a particular state in the other person's
mind - something that is obviously epistemically unsound if you actually stop
and think about it.

And I'm not asking these questions to troll - I believe the prevalence of low-
consciousness in public participation in democracy is what makes these sorts
of problems possible in the first place. I strongly believe that if people,
even _some_ people, were more harshly critical of listening to the
words/promises/assurances of politicians and corporate leaders, we wouldn't
find ourselves in many of these positions in the first place.

> Trade is a complex issue and Trump single handedly is jeopardizing this
> sensitive topic by openly declaring trade wars with multiple nations in open
> platform like Twitter.

It is indeed a complex issue, far more complex than most people are able to
comprehend.

EDIT: It's a shame that the implementation of post throttling (claimed to be
based on _rate_ of posting) seems to have the side effect of not allowing
those who've posted substantive but dissenting opinions are prevented from
defending what they've posted, while those who post low quality _but popular_
opinions (often stated as facts) seem to suffer no such restriction. I wonder
if lowering diversity of opinions might sometimes lead to insular thinking
both within individual forums as well as in our overall democracy. I wonder if
anyone cares, more than they care about winning an argument.

> You are suggesting Trump is doing this based on recommendation of his team
> or in depth analysis of the topic.

Technically speaking, no. I am _asking_ for an explanation of the thinking of
someone who _has_ claimed (with no stated evidence) that Trump _and his team_
do not understand: "The logical conclusion would be that if you are a global
company and want to keep selling to China (or to whoever will get a trade ban
or sanction), you should not incorporate any US tech, or have US development
teams. This seems to be quite counterproductive from the US point of view, it
means that investing in the US expose you to additional risks."

> Your proof being members of his team.

I've made no assertion, or offered proof. _I am asking a question_.

I believe my comment above on heuristics is worthy of some consideration.

> Even though trade is complex issue, people will understand careful
> diplomacy.

They often will yes, no disagreement from me.

> What Trump is doing is like carrying a sledge hammer and out in full swing
> against trading nations.

A sledge hammer. Oh, ok. If that's the case, then is it clearly logical how
incorrect my simplistic interpretation is, and downvotes are well deserved.

> There is no pattern or logic to it, other than scare tactics.

Is this a fact or an opinion?

> If you can point out to why you think he is doing this in more convincing
> manner then I think you might not have been downvoted.

So, the first person who makes a comment is now considered correct until
someone can offer a substantive rebuttal? Does popularity of a statement play
into this at all? Is this covered in the HN guidelines or somewhere else I'm
not aware of?

Consider this possibility: might I be trying, although perhaps not
successfully, to forcibly inject a bit of objectiveness into these
conversations?

Might that be _possible_?

~~~
maypeacepreva1l
You are suggesting Trump is doing this based on recommendation of his team or
in depth analysis of the topic. Your proof being members of his team. Even
though trade is complex issue, people will understand careful diplomacy. What
Trump is doing is like carrying a sledge hammer and out in full swing against
trading nations. There is no pattern or logic to it, other than scare tactics.
If you can point out to why you think he is doing this in more convincing
manner then I think you might not have been downvoted.

~~~
mistermann
See edit above.

------
adambware
Serious question - Has this trade war actually helped any U.S. industry?

~~~
goodside
Domestic steel and coal production, which is why Trump is uniquely popular in
the rural areas surrounding Pittsburgh.

~~~
ohlookabird
I am not so sure about that. These are graphs for steel production in the US:

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/steel-
production](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/steel-production)

Looking at 5 years or more there doesn't seem to be such big increase in steel
production.

And coal is in decline:

[https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/industrial-
produc...](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/industrial-production-
mining-coal-mining-fed-data.html)

Also I read quite a few articles over the last year about closing down of coal
mines, mainly in PA and WV.

~~~
adventured
The US steel industry is in better economic shape now than it has been in
decades.

Nucor is nearly worth more than ArcelorMittal and earned more last quarter
than ArcelorMittal did. Unthinkable just a few years ago.

Nucor's sales jumped from $16b to $25b in two years up through fiscal 2018.
Net income jumped from $80m in 2015, to $2.3 billion in 2018 (operating income
went from $654m to $3.3b).

US Steel Corporation saw its sales jump from $10b to $14b over two years
through 2018, net income jumped from _negative_ $1.6b in 2015 to positive
$1.1b (operating income went from -$525m to +$950m over that time).

The US steel industry has been a disaster for decades. Now it's one of the
strongest in the world financially. China's steel companies are hemorrhaging
and require constant state support stimulus by comparison.

We can either have a healthy, strong domestic steel industry, or we can do
nothing and watch China put it into the ground through dumping and massive
state subsidies. I don't agree with any state protectionism. So long as China
gets away with what they've been doing for decades in industries like steel, I
agree with protecting important domestic industries. Steel companies (whether
they're in the US or elsewhere) are directly competing with the Chinese state,
the US state should intervene given the playing field is very uneven.

~~~
ilikehurdles
>Nucor is nearly worth more than ArcelorMittal.

No, it isn't. One share of Nucor costs more than one share of MT. This
comparison isn't even in the ballpark of the correct way to compare two
companies' worths. Nucor has 1/4th of the revenue and 1/5th of the production.

> We can either have a healthy, strong domestic steel industry, or we can do
> nothing and watch China put it into the ground through dumping and massive
> state subsidies

Steel is an intermediate product. No one buys steel as the final product.
Changes in price of steel ripple across other industries for this reason.
Steel makes up 2% of world trade and steel manufacturers provide the US with
81000 jobs, while our total manufacturers employ 12 million. On the chip
manufacturing side, Intel alone employees over 100 thousand. It's more
important to consider what the effects of tarriffs are on other parts of the
economy than jerking around a little bit of revenue or job growth in a small
specific US industry.

Also, China produces 10x more steel than the US, and is the largest consumer
of steel. It makes sense - they're building out infrastructure at a really
fast pace.

How many other industries will be hurt in exchange for a "healthy, strong"
(whatever hard numbers, if any, those words are actually meant to convey)
domestic steel industry? That is all that matters.

------
cinquemb
What has damaged the US chip industry is the overeliance upon old IP for "new"
products, combined with lack of investment in industries that would benefit
from more cutting edge tech, thus enabling state owned manufactures in china
to eat their lunch in asia in this upcoming decade.

You'd have to be really on the pipe to ignore the declining sales volume of
derivative products the past couple of years (masked quite nicely by
corporates willing to buy back shares and employ a host of reporting tricks)
before this trade war™ nonsense.

~~~
benj111
"overeliance upon old IP", "lack of investment".

What are you referring to here? The amount of capital required to develop new
nodes means theres only 2 companies left actually competing at the cutting
edge. And I would suspect the half life for chip IP is shorter than just about
any other manufacturing industry.

~~~
cinquemb
I'm trying to find an interview someone from Horseman Global gave with Real
Vision sometime in the past couple of months that went into the percentage of
profits from semiconductor companies that came from lines released pre-2000 vs
after (not sure on the exact dates) but it followed the 80-20 rule.

And I don't think there is a lack of investment in general, just a lack of
(successful) investment in companies that could use some of the newer stuff.
Obviously they still have their R&D, but it means very little if they don't
have successful (profits/revenue, not VC investment zombies like Magic Leap)
companies buying their latest and greatest.

It would also have been extremely negligent of such companies to have ignored
the monetary/economic security aspects regarding Chinese incentives. Last
year, China imported about $270 billion worth of foreign semi-conductors, a
lot of which came from the US or at least on US patents. Them solving that
alone with a domestic industry by any means would increase their asset-
liability spread to the USD by nearly 30%, and free up USD to put to work
stabilizing their banking system.

~~~
benj111
"profits from semiconductor companies that came from lines released pre-2000
vs after"

If you look at industrial applications though. The machine you start designing
today probably will use chips designed at least 5 years ago, if its another 5
years before your machine hits the market, that's 10 years before the end
consumer even gets their hands on the product. Then you're going to be selling
that machine for 10 years, and that machine is going to be running and getting
maintained for what? 10 years minimum. But those pre 2000 aren't competitive
from a performance pov. I had a Pentium 333 with 32mb of ram in 2000. That's
basically microcontroller territory now, something equivalent _should_ cost me
pence to buy now, if I were doing it clean slate.

Regarding 'successful' investment. Perhaps? But then there's plenty of capital
sloshing around at the moment, I would question why they haven't attracted
investment in such a situation. To put it more directly, what do you know that
people with billions to invest, and access the experts in the field don't?

~~~
cinquemb
>I would question why they haven't attracted investment in such a situation.

I wouldn't say there isn't investment in new industries/tech upstream, but
that it isn't in anything at a point that's driving consumer demand/profits.

>To put it more directly, what do you know that people with billions to
invest, and access the experts in the field don't?

I'm interested in brain computer interfaces (worked/consulted in multiple
research labs, published in journals, familiarity with all the politicking in
between academia-industry/etc). I have hands on experience with medical
imaging hardware/software and design of systems/sensors, and have seen a
couple of great but really expensive systems/companies only target
researchers, and many more trash systems/companies with even more funding that
continued to get peddled to the public (and research labs sadly), and the only
VC firm I've seen that even seems right up the ally with interest in something
like this (some of the people behind it), nearly 15-20% of their portfolio
companies are filled with corporate hiring startups (and another chuck
companies with gov contracts for bread n butter [i.e. easily financed with
4-52 week notes]).

If one follows Robin Hanson's take on our economic system (prestige bias wrt
to experts, and how it can go horribly wrong in certain cases outside of
wanting to associate with such people), its not hard to see how $10-100
billion or more of other peoples money mostly being burned…

~~~
benj111
"its not hard to see how $10-100 billion or more of other peoples money mostly
being burned"

Creative destruction is both a weakness and a strength though.

Yes you have billions being thrown at the wall and seeing what sticks, but
some of it will stick, and based on past experience will more than offset what
fell to the floor.

The Hedge fund you mentioned, if you're right should be very successful, that
will attract more money, until eventually there will be too much money going
into these underfunded areas.

You seem to be complaining about essential features of capitalism, on one
level you may be correct, just like observing that eating too much pizza will
make you fat, but just like the fat, it's an inherent 'feature' that you can't
really fix.

Ps "I wouldn't say there isn't investment in new industries/tech upstream, but
that it isn't in anything at a point that's driving consumer demand/profits"

Much handwringing has been had complaining about the short termism of the
markets, investing long term is good, yes ideally there should be a constant
pipeline of new products, I don't think you can write off the industry that
there isn't though.

~~~
cinquemb
>Creative destruction is both a weakness and a strength though.

I agree with this statement.

>You seem to be complaining about essential features of capitalism, on one
level you may be correct, just like observing that eating too much pizza will
make you fat, but just like the fat, it's an inherent 'feature' that you can't
really fix.

I may seem that way, but I think this situation does provide benefits for
those who can exploit it in the short run. I don't think what we call
capitalism as it exists today (on the national/international) level is an
upper bound optimal level of resource allocation, just the local
maxima/cleanest dirty shirt/etc.

>Much handwringing has been had complaining about the short termism of the
markets, investing long term is good, yes ideally there should be a constant
pipeline of new products, I don't think you can write off the industry that
there isn't though.

I think it would be more fair to say that I'm writing off the industry now,
there's alot of people/incentives in crowded positions that need to be wiped
out before I'll be more interested.

~~~
benj111
"I don't think what we call capitalism as it exists today (on the
national/international) level is an upper bound optimal level of resource
allocation, just the local maxima/cleanest dirty shirt/etc"

Maybe? Probably. I don't see how you could 'fix' it though. Sure you could
find a better local maxima. As i say, it seems to me to be an inherent
feature.

~~~
cinquemb
Yeah, well I guess in my mind the thing to be fixed would be resource
allocation, not what people may consider to be capitalism today (the present
day king-of-the-kill towards those ends). Will some of the
(social/political/economic) infrasurture of present day capitalism still
exist? Probably, just as some religious institutions from thousands years past
still exist today, but the role it plays towards some ends that drive society
forward would be made obsolete. But in saying that, these things change on
time frames beyond our own lives, with few having enough foresight to see what
may be up ahead based on some kind of understanding of where we're going now,
and fewer acting as agents of such change.

------
ptah
>To ease the blow, Micron appears to have found a workaround. It said it had
recently resumed some shipments to Huawei based on its interpretation of the
Trump administration’s restrictions, noting that some goods produced by
American companies overseas are not always considered American-made.

This sounds like the trade war is discouraging US-based manufacturing

~~~
jjwhitaker
That makes sense. With import tariffs in both countries aimed at goods from
the other a firm may find it economically viable to shift production (like
Apple) to another country with costs lower than tax paid to customs.

That will force US firms to move production out of China and/or the US to cut
costs long term, which makes sense. It takes a lot to build a steel mill or
DRAM plant and those projects will probably try to weather the storm but other
countries can make shirts and plastic toys easily enough. For Micron, they
already have manufacturing capacity outside the US but not in China. Defending
their legal argument of being a US company that doesn't make US goods is
probably hugely cheaper than tariffs.

Tariffs probably shouldn't be used like they are here anyway. They can be an
incredibly powerful negotiation tactics when applied surgically to industries
where production can't shift or is specialized to the target country. Like
sanctions they can push a deal from on or off the table but they work best
when the countries/economies are mismatched like Iran vs the US+EU.

When applied like a blanket you just end up taxing imports without a plan and
hurting everyone. There was no obvious need to do so here especially as the
lopsided trade deficit (which is not explicitly bad) lends so much leverage to
China who does have cash on hand to invest in industry to offset losses while
the US has a spiking deficit once again like with the last few GOP
administrations.

~~~
chunkyLafunga
If you look at how China has been applying tariffs on US goods, its surgical,
they only tariff goods that they know they can get somewhere else, they
haven't put tariffs on anything they they know they can only get from the US.

------
bazooka_penguin
Well you dont get to be the sole superpower in the world by competing against
healthy opponents with natural advantages. The reality is Americans are not so
competitive, let's say, against other hungrier demographics. It's really in
America's best interest to cripple the Chinese economy, as well as other big
competitors _cough_ EU which is where these policies are coming from.
Otherwise you cant win against a relatively high tech country with a massive
population being pushed through STEM and a heavy handed government that
orchestrates a great deal of their technological pursuits for the purpose of
strengthening the country so as to position it against global competitors, as
opposed to say lining pockets or pandering to a base.

~~~
sfkdjf9j3j
_It 's really in America's best interest to cripple the Chinese economy, as
well as other big competitors coughEU which is where these policies are coming
from._

No, it is not in America's best interest to cripple the economies of its
trading partners. That's absolutely absurd.

~~~
bazooka_penguin
America's hegemony is based entirely on the fact that it's the dominant
economy, not merely a large one. If the EU or China (who has even called to
replace the USD as the global currency) overtook the US then other nations
would defer to them over the US. That's the end of the american empire

------
Havoc
In other news AMD shares up. Nothing on the stock market makes sense

~~~
zanny
AMD is up because they are eating Intels lunch. The whole pie might shrink
with sanctions on China, but AMD is in the process of going from crumbs to a
legitimate slice of their own for the first time in over a decade.

------
blackoil
How competitive is Kirin compared to Qualcomm chips. Is it feasible for China
govt. to 'motivate' Xiaomi, BBK and other local companies to use it?

------
dproblem
Any country that is dealing with China today should think twice. A
dictatorship (till death do us part) with brains - capitalism - faster than
the capitalists. China wants to grow, at everyone else's expense. Walking
shoulder to shoulder with every terrorist nation on the planet (You know a
person from the friends they keep). Suppression (Tibet, Hongkong, Taiwan). I
think its time the world woke up? I am glad the Trump team is listening.

~~~
tomp
I don't understand why _dproblem_ 's reply is not just downvoted, but
flagged... Literally Trump's doing nothing else that retaliating to China's
own trade war that they've been waging for the past decade+... Except within a
much more powerful and ruthless political system.

~~~
simonh
I understand that and I agree China's trade practices were unfair and needed
to be addressed. The way to do that is with co-ordinated and concerted
international pressure based on consensus. Up against a united international
front, China would have little option but to concede.

However Trump is a nationalist and a unilateralist so he's simply incapable of
doing it. Incidentally this is why nationalists are almost universally also
climate change deniers - because climate change is a global problem that
requires global collaboration and agreement, which Nationalists can't stomach.
It's useful to understand the political forces behind a lot of these policies
and therefore the connections between them.

Instead of working with allies, the US is lashing out at both China and the
tech companies trading with it as a group. This is forcing the tech companies
to ally with China and start tech collaboration and transfer projects with
them in order to save themselves. The Hygon Dhyana and Zhaoxin projects are
examples of this. So instead of the non-Chinese international community being
rallied against China, they are being forced in bed with them. Doing so also
involves tech companies withdrawing investment and resources from the USA in
order to limit their exposure to US trade sanctions.

Long term, it's probably the single biggest and most counter-productive trade
and technological development own goal in history. Pulling out of the Iran
deal might beat it though. The way it's pushed Europe into collaborating with
Iran on financial and trade links, sidelining the US payments systems, while
also giving Iran the freedom to breach enrichment limits is definitely up
there.

~~~
chunkyLafunga
I couldn't agree with you more, the only way to deal with China is a united
front, and China knows that, that's the reason they have been reducing tariffs
for import from other countries.

------
scarejunba
The semiconductor is game-changing tech. When America allowed the Hygon Dhyana
to be made, America fucked up. Hold it back. This is real tech. You can't let
it go.

I'm for free societies, but free societies must defend themselves from
societies organized to kill free societies. The semiconductor is real. Giving
away this will pay poor dividends.

~~~
pjc50
This is ridiculous. Semiconductor manufacturing has been globalised for
_decades_. The "other China" has had TSMC since 1987, and they are world
leaders.

> Hold it back

It's technology. Talking about technology is speech. You can have free speech
or technology export restrictions but not both.

Why do people keep suggesting ways to keep America ""free"" that make it
substantially less free? Especially since 9/11.

~~~
simonh
To your last point, because they value their freedom to do things they want,
more than they value your freedom to do things you want, and will throw you
under a bus to get their way.

