U.S. Moves To Cut Huawei Off From Global Chip Suppliers (reuters.com) 95
The Trump administration on Friday moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei from global chipmakers, in an action ramping up tensions with China. From a report: The U.S. Commerce Department said it was amending an export rule to "strategically target Huawei's acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain U.S. software and technology." The reaction from China was swift with a report saying it was ready to put U.S. companies on an "unreliable entity list," as part of countermeasures in response to the new limits on Huawei, China's Global Times reported on Friday. The measures include launching investigations and imposing restrictions on U.S. companies such as Apple, Cisco, Qualcomm as well as suspending purchase of Boeing airplanes, the report said here citing a source.
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Fear of competition.
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Nah, this is just a part of the extended fight with the CCP. This administration hasn't handled things elegantly or quietly like before with trade negotiations so now we're seeing it play out in headlines.
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Historically, break down of trade leads to war
Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it
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Re: Wonder why the US is doing this. (Score:1)
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Pretty certain that was the reason for TPP, Trans Pacific Partnership, which trump stumbled out of, not really understanding what it was... just Obama Baaaad
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Why do you believe that NAFTA was not a good deal? Apparently trump thought it was such a good deal, he just added some chrome strips and detailing before claiming it as his own
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Oh golly, where you get your information from?
Overall, the changes from the old NAFTA are mostly cosmetic. After a year and a half of negotiations, the three parties are going to end up with a new trade deal that looks remarkably similar to the old NAFTA. The main structure of the deal is largely intact; the biggest changes include higher rules-of-origin requirements for the auto sector, marginally greater U.S. access to the Canadian dairy market, and a scale-back of the investor-state dispute settlement (I [brookings.edu]
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Trade Negotiations? When do the Jedi appear?
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You mean, the "fight" with the CCP that Nixon started by visiting the country and recognizing them instead of the ROC on Taiwan? That "fight"? The fight for the cheap Chinese labor and the big Chinese market? I see. Seems US lost that in the early 2000s already.
Re:Wonder why the US is doing this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because of Huawei's crimes? Lets not lose perspective and forget the Chinese government are the bad actors in all this.
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Help me out a sec here, what crimes?
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I really don't know, what crimes?
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Help me out a sec here, what crimes?
Potential crimes, actually. Given their level of state control in their economy, it's possible that Huawei could be ordered to put back doors in their products. Even if they have not to date. The same sort of possibility that US manufacturers rail against when we try to proactively regulate some undesirable behavior.
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Which is nothing at all like the backdoored encryption algorithms that the NSA was shoving into world-wide production for years.
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Says Falung Gong, which tried to "$cientology" their way to power in PRC, and is currently being hunted down and used for spare organs...
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Oh right, that crazy state department and CIA sponsored cult. Haven't heard about them in a while.
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I never thought they were a CIA front, just a bunch of people trying to get rich and powerful off of religion.
They do own The Epoch Times, which is every bit as big a propaganda machine as OAN
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If you find yourself siding with China AT ALL
"You are either with us or against us." How about I don't side with either US or Them. Both are untrustworthy and the justification that we use to not buy Chinese can easily be turned around to not buy American either. Sorry, but if you can't actually present your evidence, I'm not buying your bullshit.
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If you find yourself siding with China AT ALL "because America does it too" you side with Tyrants. People who back dictatorships or are "Devil's Advocates" for War Criminals (Uigers and Hong Kong and China) can take their words and stuff them in every open hole.
You might want to consider Trump and his constant praise of dictators and his constant fighting with democratically elected leaders of ALLIED nations. Not to mention his statements that he would have to look into becoming President for Life. He seems to have some orifices to fill.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/why-huawei-not-sold-in-united-states-2018-12#huawei-planned-to-finally-sell-its-smartphones-in-the-us-for-the-first-time-earlier-this-year-but-the-effort-died-at-the-last-minute-when-att-the-lone-us-carrier-abruptly-pulled-out-of-the-deal-7
A lot of "alleged" including crimes that third party nations have assessed as confirmed by classified data the US shared with them under agreements but can't declassify such as Germany and UK.
Given China's horrible track record and long his
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So they're guilty of crimes that can't be named and haven't been tried in a public jury. Pardon me if I find that unconvincing.
OTOH, China clearly *should* put US based companies on a "unreliable trading partner" list, as we've proven repeatedly over the last four years that we *are* unreliable. And quite possibly we should put Chinese based companies on a similar list, though AFAIKT this is based more on surmises than on actual knowledge. They have the capability of behaving badly, even if I don't know
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No China has many crimes, they steal our tech on a regular basis. It's a bit weird to punish one if their phone companies though
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This isn't really about crimes. This is about self-protection. That's why neither the US nor China should make themselves too vulnerable to the other. Not unless you can balance the vulnerabilities so that we're equally vulnerable.
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It isn't just about self-protection. It is also about protecting everyone else who, like the US for a moment, forgot what the Chinese government really is.
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"No China has many crimes, they steal our tech on a regular basis. It's a bit weird to punish one if their phone companies though"
It would be wierd in the US. In China where that communications company is basically a sock puppet for their state intelligence and military and is using US IP to improve their capability to infect, infiltrate, and manipulate information throughout the world it makes sense. Is it enough? Likely not, but it is something.
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"So they're guilty of crimes that can't be named and haven't been tried in a public jury. Pardon me if I find that unconvincing."
Many crimes were named that isn't changed by additional crimes which were not. As for a public jury, we aren't talking about a human who is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Hell if we apply Chinese or UK rules they are guilty upon accusation and have an obligation to prove their innocence. I won't beat the point to death though.
"They have the capability of b
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Here and [businessinsider.com]
Here and [cnet.com]
And considering that America does not manufacture these items, it is not about competition. Europe, Israel, Japan, S. Korea do.
Windbourne(moderating).
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Since we want more things manufactured in the US, putting restrictions on things that the US doesn't manufacture would seem to be about competition.
Looking at TFA:
“This is a licensing requirement. It does not necessarily mean that things are denied,” the official said, adding that the rule gives the U.S. government greater “visibility” into the shipments. “What are done with those applications, we’ll have to see."
OK, nevermind, it's probably not about competition, it's probably about graft.
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https://www.businessinsider.com/why-huawei-not-sold-in-united-states-2018-12#huawei-planned-to-finally-sell-its-smartphones-in-the-us-for-the-first-time-earlier-this-year-but-the-effort-died-at-the-last-minute-when-att-the-lone-us-carrier-abruptly-pulled-out-of-the-deal-7
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Don't forget those trivial header files they copied one time!
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this cold war which is heating up
its gonna cause collateral damage again , and guess who's in the middle (ah hah ! yo lo)
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Nice straw men. You got any evidence to back that up?
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Which is nothing like the backdoored encryption algorithms that the NSA made a standard, and was used worldwide for years. Or the backdoor that who was it, the Dutch, had? or the warrantless (or warrants with the ISP denied the right to speak publicly about it that the FBI uses.
Right?
Re: Wonder why the US is doing this. (Score:2)
So? Really, so? Those countries can look after their own and do the same thing. Take the companies to court and put sanctions on them. Happens all the time for other stuff.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Suicidal bluff (Score:5, Insightful)
Virtually all Western consumer, professional and industrial electronics – and some military ones – use components which are manufactured in China and / or they are assembled there. The West no longer has any significant fabrication capacity. Its capacity for assembling is virtually non-existent as well.
Right, they mold a lot of plastics and... assemble components. Did you consider that perhaps those are not very impressive feats, and they can be easily replaced?
Did you think that Americans stopped doing final assembly of components because it is too hard for us, or we're just not good at it?
It is a bit funny.
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Well, if that is the level of your insight, of course this will seem easy to you. They do a lot more than that actually and have better qualified workers by now in addition. And of the really cheap ones, they have many, many more. Sure, invest 30-50 years and accept strong financial losses over that time, and the US may be competitive with China again in that sector. Somehow I do not see that happening. Instead, Trump will go to the trash-heap of history and things will get back the the profitable state the
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You vastly underestimate China.
They have huge high tech supply chains, from rare earth mines to clean room fabs to high end assembly lines. If you have an idea for a new product you can get it into mass production in weeks.
Replicating that will take a decade and trillions of dollars, and has a good chance of falling anyway.
By then the jobs will be gone, automated away. Innovation and services are the future and the Chinese are getting really good at that too.
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They don't have high tech fabs. They have low tech fabs to make their own large-transistor circuits, but they import all the modern digital ICs that they assemble.
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There are fabs able to do single digit processes in China, e.g. Shanghai.
Also they have close ties with Taiwan which has some of the best, if not the best fabs in the world.
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I'm sure they have lots of Taiwanese friends, just ask them.
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Taiwan can't really refuse to do business with China, not that they would want to do that anyway.
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Did you think that Americans stopped doing final assembly of components because it is too hard for us, or we're just not good at it?
"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is." —Yogi Berra
If you aren't practicing a thing, you are no longer good at it. This applies to literally everything, even things you think require inconsequential amounts of skill. The difference between an amateur human and a practiced human ranges from substantial to astronomical, and the difference between an amateur group of humans and a practiced group of humans is always dramatic and is often astronomical. I
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No, if you stop doing the easy stuff for awhile to focus on just the hard parts, it doesn't mean you forgot the easy parts. That's just dumb.
And then you talk about SpaceX, which if you were being honest that analysis would destroy your thesis. Instead you wave your hands and insist that SpaceX and Boeing are like an "ignorant amateur" compared to China. That's exceptional stupidity that doesn't even earn refutation.
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No, if you stop doing the easy stuff for awhile to focus on just the hard parts, it doesn't mean you forgot the easy parts. That's just dumb.
You think small component assembly is easy. You're wrong. I cited American corporations with recent experience in how hard it is, from the gigantic public corporation to the tiny sole proprietorship. Building giant expensive capital equipment in a monopoly market does not teach you anything at all about how to build small, cheap things rapidly in a commodity market. Far from it. It gives you the false sense of security you so vigorously demonstrated.
And then you talk about SpaceX, which if you were being honest that analysis would destroy your thesis. Instead you wave your hands and insist that SpaceX and Boeing are like an "ignorant amateur" compared to China.
Wat? You completely misunderstood me. I'm saying Sp
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It isn't like I don't know what a pick and place machine is.
I've written my own firmware for an X-Y table.
Why would you assume I don't know if that part of the process is easy, or not? Of course it is easy. If it wasn't the easy part, it wouldn't have followed the cheap labor. And yet, the labor cost involved in assembly is only relevant with really junky, plastic, disposable products at the bottom of the market. A middle-grade product, they're only saving pennies on the labor. The customer doesn't care; bu
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SpaceX and Boeing are both demonstrating this with the Commercial Crew Program, which has already taken longer than the original Project Gemini to figure out how to build a capsule to put humans into orbit, without a single launch of humans yet vs the 10 of Gemini.. Inflation-adjusted, it will cost nearly a billion dollars more than Gemini, at $8.2 billion vs $7.3 billion, if all contract options are exercised, though it will result in two independent capsules and launch systems, not one, and four more flights. To be fair, the extra 3 years Commercial Crew has required were basically NASA hemming and hawing while they very slowly and carefully felt their way into the concept of not micromanaging the crap out of their contractors, but once they got over that in September of 2014 and awarded Boeing $4.5 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion to actually build their proposals, it has still taken SpaceX 5 years and 8 months to fly humans once and it is expected to take Boeing well over 6 years to do the same. And that still leaves 8 more launches before Commercial Crew is on par with Gemini.
No. The Dragon capsule took so long to get to the first flight unlike Gemini (and why compare to Gemini not Mercury?) because of the heavy duty regulations that grew up over the last 50 odd years since Gemini. Also Dragon has been used for some time as a CARGO capsule (8 years). Why are you including the cost of the CARGO Dragon as part of the cost of the CREW Dragon? The cargo Dragon is also reusable. Why given those things AND its capacity for a 7 person crew don't you think it reasonable to cost more
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The Dragon capsule took so long to get to the first flight unlike Gemini (and why compare to Gemini not Mercury?) because of the heavy duty regulations that grew up over the last 50 odd years since Gemini.
So the parachute drop test failure was a regulation? The crew escape system test failure that resulted in a massive test pad fire and total loss of the test article was a regulation? The flight test that wasted so much maneuvering fuel that the capsule couldn't safely complete its ISS docking test was a regulation? You seem to be entirely ignorant of multiple engineering failures on the parts of both SpaceX and Boeing that ranged from the substantially dangerous to the utterly catastrophic. SpaceX had a
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Re:Suicidal bluff (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that the stable genius is unlikely to fold. Things are about to get really ugly.
I think he is desperate for a fight that (he thinks) he understands and that (he thinks) he can win. What actually constitutes "thinking" in this case is up for debate. It does certainly not denote some rational process, as the results clearly indicate.
Re:Suicidal bluff (Score:4, Insightful)
The West no longer has any significant fabrication capacity.
Now wait a second. You'll have to clarify that statement. There are several 45nm fabs for all kinds of ICs. Are you specifically talking microprocessors? Additionally, not counting the newest one in Wuhan, a lot of chips are made in Taiwan. I mean, I don't want to get into a geopolitical discussion but some might call that, "not China".
and assembly capacity
The assembly is the key here. Fabrication in China is meh but their assembly is the big sell. These assembly plants are usually built right next to the supply, if they're running a second shit they just get a dozen guys to go next door and grab more parts. None of this, it'll get to Minnesota next week. And that's the geopolitical issue the US has. Nobody wants a single State/City to be the main hub for all the production. Additionally, States would always be vying for the production every so often with "Oh we'll give you $100 million tax break if you come here!"
This is literally the reason why the US can't do the Chinese method. In China, they point at a spot on the map and that's where everything gets made, no questions asked. In the US, you'd have every State trying to get the rights for the goods and the ones that get jaded throwing fits and trying to break the monolith apart so they can get a piece of that sweet industry. Now that doesn't mean there are no other methods outside the Chinese method that might help the US be competitive, but it'll be up to the US to "innovate" that. As it stands, there's not a really straightforward way for the US to compete with Chinese assembly.
If you were to bet on who can work around a mutual trade meltdown who'd you think would rebound first? East or West?
I mean China would totally win out on a trade meltdown. US citizens don't seem like they can stand the local Applebees shutting down, much less entire trade routes.
Clearly this move is a bluff and China is calling it. The problem is that the stable genius is unlikely to fold. Things are about to get really ugly.
Things are about to get ugly? Have you looked around the US recently?
U forgot 1 thing. (Score:1)
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The West no longer has any significant fabrication capacity.
Now wait a second. You'll have to clarify that statement. There are several 45nm fabs for all kinds of ICs. Are you specifically talking microprocessors? Additionally, not counting the newest one in Wuhan, a lot of chips are made in Taiwan. I mean, I don't want to get into a geopolitical discussion but some might call that, "not China".
If China were to decide they want to make Taiwan part of China again in fact and not just in (their) name, Taiwan couldn't stop them, and do you really think the US would? I'm not sure the US could even if we had the political will to do it, which we don't.
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Re: Suicidal bluff (Score:2)
They won? The old point-a-threat-and-continue trick of the despots. Apparently the Wuhan virus is actually America virus released by China to defeat American freedom and democracy. Maga!!!
Re:Suicidal bluff (Score:4, Informative)
The West no longer has any significant fabrication capacity.
Well, this is wildly incorrect because half our stuff is still manufactured in the US. Should push come to shove we could radically increase that, especially now with automation. It's only sent to China because of cheap human labor there.
If you were to bet on who can work around a mutual trade meltdown who'd you think would rebound first? East or West?
It would be a punishing blow to them because they have made themselves reliant on x86 which is primarily a US technology. They would be reduced to relying on chips from VIA Technologies for x86 chips. Also, all major GPUs are designed by US companies. This is a dependency they are working to eliminate but if they were cut off then it would take a decade for them to really recover. In the mean time they would likely go to the black market to get chips.
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Contrary to popular opinion, the $ value of manufacturing in the US is within 10% of the $ value of manufacturing in (red) China. But in the US manufacturing only accounts for 12% of our overall economic output, while in China, it accounts for 27% of theirs. (2018 numbers from Brookings)
Per capita, US manufacturing output exceeds China's by far. The long term trend would be for the per capita outputs to even out, b
Only Nixon (Score:2)
Only Nixon could go to China. Only Trump could make them wish Nixon had declared war instead.
Not the best approach (Score:3)
Actions like this generally force the targeted country to replace global suppliers with internal suppliers. Explicitly it makes the second largest economy in the world stop buying from America. Historically this led to both Israel and South Africa developing nuclear weapons. So not very productive.
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Yes, pretty much this. History is full of protectionism (justified with lies such as the ones currently used) that then ultimately failed spectacularly. The case I like best is the story of "Made in Germany". The Brits forced that label on steelwares and machines from Germany in order to protect people from inferior and dangerous German products (which was a lie). Turns out that "Made in Germany" became a mark of quality, because the stuff was much better and, in addition cheaper than the domestic stuff and
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Canadian club whiskey is another example of protectionism gone wrong. In the first place, the distillers moved from the US to Canada because of prohibition. Then post-prohibition, that style of whiskey was sold in New York bars as "club whisky". The US distillers lobbied to require imported whiskey to be labeled with the country of origin, thinking Americans would shun them. This resulted in the Canadian ones being labeled "Canadian Club Whiskey". Americans started seeing it as somehow exotic or exclus
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The Brits forced that label on steelwares and machines from Germany in order to protect people from inferior and dangerous German products (which was a lie).
Actually it's not that simple. Germany was protecting its own steel industry with high import tariffs and exporting its own goods falsely marked with the trademarks of UK businesses. The British response was to require labelling which did deter people from buying the counterfeit goods, with the unintended consequence that only quality products that people really wanted labelled "Made in Germany" were found in the supply chain once the inferior products were removed.
I think the message is that if there is a
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(No mod points today)
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Well, yes, things are always more complicated. The point is the countermeasure backfired pretty badly. I agree that simplistic nationalism is not going to cut it, you have to solve the problem withing the market. For the case of Huawei, I do not really see what can be done though. I also do not really see anything needs to be done. The spying is just a pretext that could be addressed (and probably already _is_ addressed) by analyzing the software of the devices. If you are important enough, you can get sour
Just a renegade employee (Score:1)
If you don't support Beijing's human rights record (Score:4, Insightful)
...then stop buying from Beijing.
The tech community are hypocritically hilarious. They (mostly) hate Trump but love shiny objects so much evil foreign governments get a complete pass.
Buying from Beijing is like buying weapons from Nazi Germany in the 1930s. It subsidizes the PLA/PLAN, gives Beijing more money for predatory investments in Africa and Asia, and otherwise empowers people even worse than Trump. The awfulness of the GOP doesn't negate other evil elsewhere.
IDGAF so long as I get my shiny objects, but I don't pretend the world isn't a savage Hobbesian shithole or that trade with an enemy society (not an enemy government, the society is even more of a military-industrial-corporate complex than the US because it includes a command economy) has no consequences.
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Nearly a full Godwin there - or was that full Godwin already?
Re:If you don't support Beijing's human rights rec (Score:5, Interesting)
Stop talking to "tech companies" and talk to Walmart, which puts more money into PRC pockets than any other single source
Oddly enough, the Walmart billionaires all support trump
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I remember when Walmart had a huge "Buy American" campaign. The ads kept running for a few months even after Walmart started buying their goods from China.
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Consumers respond to incentives, such as the prices. It's the corporate leadership who should be answerable for this. But then, oh wait, who exactly let China into WTO and gave it most favored nation status? Anyways.
The fool is in full meltdown (Score:1)
to distract from his own incompetence. This unstable idiot needs to go but he can create a lot of damage between now and November.
Cut them off ... (Score:2)
..from Global Chip suppliers out outside China .. bolstering China ...
When China pays more than the USA to Korea, Japan, and India .. who are they going to be loyal to ...
Prediction (Score:2)
Three, four, or at most five years from now China is going to have world class indigenous fabrication facilities completely immune to any US sanctions, and then what?