The Huawei ban, as I recall, was mostly about 5G equipment for which the primary competitor is Ericsson (based in Sweden). There wasn’t really a viable US alternative and the ban wasn’t protecting some US-based company.
Huawei is banned because they installed backdoors for a hostile foreign government in their devices and got caught. Not "just" because they're foreign.
You can buy lots of Chinese made and foreign-made handsets in the US.
Also, if the goal wasn't to bankrupt Huawei, what was it?
Force them to become market leaders across a broader part of the technology sector? That's been the effect of the export ban. How was it supposed to reduce the amount of wiretapping, etc. they can do?
I think even Chinese companies believed that Huawei was banned and sanctioned because they did something wrong and not just because they were Chinese and really good at what they do.
Now of course they are all sanctioned and Huawei is sitting pretty with years invested in a sanctions proofed supply line.
The only thing that banning Huawei is sure to accomplish is choking innovation.
It's reasonable to worry about security in telecommunications, but you'd be hard-pressed to find any telecom that doesn't manufacture equipment in China including Ericsson, Huawei's biggest competitor. Huawei has too much to lose from spying, and I'd personally be more worried about these non-Chinese companies which rely so heavily on Chinese subsidies and subcontracting.
One legitimate concern about Huawei though is transparency. Because it is privately held and not listed on any stock market, it is not subject to reporting requirements and it's ownership structure is allowed to remain secretive. However, these aren't grounds for an outright ban.
For the time being I understand that the ban doesn't actually stop Huawei from using ARM chips - it stops ARM from co-operating to help them build their own chips, e.g. their Kirin line of processors. So either they could just fork their design and stop keeping in lock-step with ARM (while maintaining a level of compatibility) or just start sourcing parts from third parties.
reply