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Huawei vs. USA: Another 90-day delay in the farce of the trade war

19.11.2019

Translation: machine translated

The USA and Huawei have renegotiated. Nothing changes. The trade war beyond the Huawei situation is degenerating into a complete farce and nobody is winning

The trade war between the USA and China is degenerating into a farce. In the latest round, Huawei has been granted another 90-day extension and is now allowed to do business with the USA until February. This is now the third 90-day waiver granted after the USA and the Trump administration placed Huawei on the US Department of Commerce's so-called "Entity List". This would prohibit US companies from trading with Huawei.

The problem: Huawei is too big, too important for network infrastructure and not just for end consumers, to simply stop working with the company. The solution so far has been exceptional authorisation.

However, the fight against Huawei is just a sideshow in a trade war that is currently threatening to become a complete farce.

The background to the trade war

The trade war between the USA and China has not just been going on since the Huawei situation. And not just in the communications sector either. However, it is not entirely clear what the USA wants to achieve with the trade war. Even if we assume that the aim is to strengthen the US domestic market and the US labour market, the measures taken so far are not effective. When it comes to stopping China's wild trade, that doesn't work either. Somehow it seems to be also about China not being entirely fair to US companies, stealing knowledge and technology from time to time and forcing US companies out of the Chinese market so that China's state-owned companies have more space on the market.

However, the most powerful country in the world sees itself under the leadership of a "tiny fingered, Cheeto-faced, ferret wearing shitgibbon", as Donald Trump was once called by Twitter user MetalOllie, is facing a completely different challenge: peeing on each other's legs.

There are the US president's questionable tweets in which he directly gives orders to his people.

...Our great American companies are hereby commanded to immediately find alternatives for China...

Donald Trump, Präsident der vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, Twitter, 23. August 2019

Then there are the passive-aggressive statements from the Chinese.

[The situation] is quite unfortunate and unfair to the US companies and their Family members.

Ken Hu, Stellvertretender Geschäftsleiter Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, Fortune Magazine, 18. November 2019

This is how it goes back and forth. In the end, neither Donald Trump nor Ken Hu suffers, because Trump seems to have little on his mind besides his indictment for abuse of office and the threat of impeachment that comes with it. His announcement that he could shoot someone in the street and not lose seems perfectly plausible so far.

Ken Hu, meanwhile, pops up out of nowhere from time to time, makes a statement and disappears again into the invisibility of the international media. Standing above him is Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, who seems to be less concerned with the trade war and more concerned about his image. He is often compared to the children's book character Winnie the Pooh and has therefore banned all images of the yellow bear in China. He is also not above publishing propaganda videos in English from time to time.

Now to the people who are actually working

Meanwhile, the two nations' economic departments are also busy antagonising each other. The USA imposes tariffs on product X, China imposes tariffs on product Y. Soybeans, steel, whatever... The main thing is that the other side has something to bite on. There doesn't seem to be a solution in sight, nor a goal.

A trade agreement to end the conflict is said to be in the works and USA Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirms that it exists. Although no one has ever seen it and its implementation is not foreseeable. The so-called "Phase 1" of the new trade with China is therefore a long time coming.

As a result of the whole farce, tariffs are still being imposed and the narrative is changing. If it was once about fair trade with China - presumably - everyone is now happy if the end is back to the state it was in before the trade war.

[The situation] is quite unfortunate and unfair to the US companies and their Family members.

Ken Hu, Stellvertretender Geschäftsleiter Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd, Fortune Magazine, 18. November 2019

Well, that's quite enchanting.

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Dominik Bärlocher

Senior Editor

dominik.baerlocher@digitecgalaxus.ch

Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.

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