They are already doing it, just look at the situation with ARM, which isn't even an American company. Now the next step is they might apply maximum pressure on TSMC, and if TSMC caves, I don't see how in the short term the Huawei consumer division could survive. Just this Friday new bans have forced AMD to cut its joint partnership with China, and there goes the hopes of Zen/Hygon etc. All of these vassals you speak of have US military bases and/or benefit greatly from US weapons imports. If push comes to shove, Taiwan might choose to side with the US.
Trade War with China
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They are already doing it, just look at the situation with ARM, which isn't even an American company. Now the next step is they might apply maximum pressure on TSMC, and if TSMC caves, I don't see how in the short term the Huawei consumer division could survive. Just this Friday new bans have forced AMD to cut its joint partnership with China, and there goes the hopes of Zen/Hygon etc. All of these vassals you speak of have US military bases and/or benefit greatly from US weapons imports. If push comes to shove, Taiwan might choose to side with the US.
Now, I don't know how much Hygon got out of the deal. But Zen was originally designed as a 14 nm FinFET processor using a TSMC process.
SMIC should have a 14 nm FinFET process available this year. So it might just be Hygon can redesign the chip to be fabbed at SMIC.
The chip packaging, I also suspect China could do it. Now the processor won't be sold outside China but that was never the point in it.
That is assuming there is even an issue at all. For all we know the US government order could only apply to future contracts.
If it applies to Hygon's current processor, I think the Chinese government should sanction AMD, and place a fine on them to recoup Hygon's licensing costs.
If AMD don't pay, all products using AMD processors coming into China, that includes the Sony PS4/PS5 console and Microsoft Xbox consoles should be embargoed. They should be held at Chinese customs until they pay.
However AFAIK Zhaoxin is a different deal, the processor is being designed in China, It is not just a license. The Chinese government should also fund them to make a separate shrink for their future design to use SMIC 14 nm process. China's government should also fund SMIC to enable faster ramp-up of 28 nm and 14 nm production and fund the conversion from TSMC to SMIC for critical chip designs.
The Chinese state should also promote concentration of the many independent ARM processor players in China into two or three separate companies to concentrate resources in order to enable them to better compete with MediaTek and Qualcomm.
Concentration should not be mandated to those doing RISC-V or other novel architectures which are independent of foreign patents.
SMIC should have a 14 nm FinFET process available this year. So it might just be Hygon can redesign the chip to be fabbed at SMIC.
The chip packaging, I also suspect China could do it. Now the processor won't be sold outside China but that was never the point in it.
That is assuming there is even an issue at all. For all we know the US government order could only apply to future contracts.
If it applies to Hygon's current processor, I think the Chinese government should sanction AMD, and place a fine on them to recoup Hygon's licensing costs.
If AMD don't pay, all products using AMD processors coming into China, that includes the Sony PS4/PS5 console and Microsoft Xbox consoles should be embargoed. They should be held at Chinese customs until they pay.
However AFAIK Zhaoxin is a different deal, the processor is being designed in China, It is not just a license. The Chinese government should also fund them to make a separate shrink for their future design to use SMIC 14 nm process. China's government should also fund SMIC to enable faster ramp-up of 28 nm and 14 nm production and fund the conversion from TSMC to SMIC for critical chip designs.
The Chinese state should also promote concentration of the many independent ARM processor players in China into two or three separate companies to concentrate resources in order to enable them to better compete with MediaTek and Qualcomm.
Concentration should not be mandated to those doing RISC-V or other novel architectures which are independent of foreign patents.
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vassal country companies dont legally have to comply for any products containing less than 25% us technology regardless. some will comply just to be good vassals, but most will want to keep their revenue streams intact
and the rest will be highly incentivized to ensure that their updated and next gen products use less than 25% us technology as well
and the rest will be highly incentivized to ensure that their updated and next gen products use less than 25% us technology as well
I also forgot to add. As an additional condition to sell their processors in China, AMD and Intel could be made to cross-license their patents (not chip designs) with one or two Chinese companies. Otherwise they should be declared to be a CPU cartel and face steep fines (billions each) at the same time their CPU patents are invalidated in China by the courts.
The ARM processor companies, after the concentration, should all have baseband processor designs, either their own, or one licensed from a Chinese company like Huawei. The Chinese state should convince Huawei to do this as it is in their and the market's best interests in the long run instead of feeding MediaTek or Qualcomm which can then be shut off at the whims of the US government.
The ARM processor companies, after the concentration, should all have baseband processor designs, either their own, or one licensed from a Chinese company like Huawei. The Chinese state should convince Huawei to do this as it is in their and the market's best interests in the long run instead of feeding MediaTek or Qualcomm which can then be shut off at the whims of the US government.
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antiterror13
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TSMC’s only tie with US is using their market. US can try to throw their entire nation at it like they did with Huawei, but if the international community ignored their word on Huawei, why would they listen on TSMC?
If it came down to the domestic market or the US market, there’s no way they would choose the latter. Not only is it smaller (although not by much), but more importantly the public and even their own employees will lynch them.
The reasoning about targeting Huawei is quite simple. US has yet to prove themselves able to hurt the Chinese economy at large despite using up most of their cards, so instead they attack a private company without government protection, hoping that it will cause panic and give advantages in the negotiations.
It’s the same principle as terror bombings. Will losing 10 people to a bomber really hurt the targeted country? No. Even 9/11 deaths were eclipsed by car accidents.
Out of an economy of 27.4 trillion, Huawei is only worth 8.4 billion. The greatest provider of technology by far is still the state owned institutes that make R&D for the government, Huawei and other civilian companies in most cases only apply created technology for civilian use. Furthermore, even if Huawei lost popularity, those people will not be gone and will just rally behind another company.
But by targeting them, they inspire both fear in the Chinese public and hope with the domestic audience. Using that, they can both last longer against the tariffs at home and also create more room for slip ups in China.
Trump had already done it with ZTE, so he thought Huawei would similarly quickly collapse and accept US control.
I think he never expected they would fight and that it would hurt US companies like Qualcomm as it is the case right now.
Trump is doing something the US has done for a long time with European and other Asian companies.
Anti-competitive behavior to protect US companies. Just look at Apple vs Samsung court case.
GE vs Enercon is another case.
In this case they came up with a flimsy case where ZTE and Huawei were evading US Iran sanctions regime. Similar to claims of corruption of foreign officials in Alstom's case. But if it wasn't that it would be something else like Qualcomm patents on 5G. They did not go with Qualcomm patents because ZTE and Huawei are major clients of their chips.
Now, imagine this, the Chinese government plays from the US handbook: GE vs Enercon. They declare Qualcomm to infringe on Huawei's 5G patents and ban all Qualcomm chip sales in China. They only need to do this for a year and it will cause them huge losses. I think the appropriate time to spring this particular trap will be in the Fall, just before Xmas/New Years shopping.
I think he never expected they would fight and that it would hurt US companies like Qualcomm as it is the case right now.
Trump is doing something the US has done for a long time with European and other Asian companies.
Anti-competitive behavior to protect US companies. Just look at Apple vs Samsung court case.
GE vs Enercon is another case.
In this case they came up with a flimsy case where ZTE and Huawei were evading US Iran sanctions regime. Similar to claims of corruption of foreign officials in Alstom's case. But if it wasn't that it would be something else like Qualcomm patents on 5G. They did not go with Qualcomm patents because ZTE and Huawei are major clients of their chips.
Now, imagine this, the Chinese government plays from the US handbook: GE vs Enercon. They declare Qualcomm to infringe on Huawei's 5G patents and ban all Qualcomm chip sales in China. They only need to do this for a year and it will cause them huge losses. I think the appropriate time to spring this particular trap will be in the Fall, just before Xmas/New Years shopping.
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Trump took a 500 million "loan" from China in order to reverse ZTE, but at that point (more than three months later) the ban had already done its toll in terms of damage to ZTE so it accomplished its goal. ZTE is tiny compared to Huawei. What he is going to do this time? Offer China a 50% discount (since Ren stated loses of 30 billion) and offer to accept $15 billion in exchange for unblocking Huawei? I think its different beast this time. This is about 5G and #1 smartphone maker, unlike ZTE, Huawei is at the cutting edge of 5G, gained lots of contracts around the world, and otherwise would have become world #1 smartphone maker by September of this year. So I don't see the US ever reversing the ban on Huawei.
GE (USA) vs Enercon (Germany) was similar. Read about the case.
Enercon was prevented from selling their wind turbines in the USA because they supposedly infringed on GE patents.
The thing is, GE copied Enercon technology via industrial espionage and patented it as their own.
This case is well known in the wind power sector.
For many years Enercon couldn't sell in the USA. This hurt them quite a lot financially vs their competitors.
Same way, Huawei is banned from sales in the USA. Just the excuse is different.
With regards to TSMC there is always a danger they could be pressured into pushing companies like Huawei out. Their main clients are NVIDIA, Apple, AMD, all US companies. They could threaten to move production to Samsung or GlobalFoundries for example to coerce TSMC. The US government could also threaten TSMC with denial of machine tools by placing them on the sanction list. It isn't realistic for them to do that, as TSMC can't be replaced in less than 3 years, but it could happen.
Someone like Apple even has enough capital they could have their own fabs, they simply chose not to do it.
Enercon was prevented from selling their wind turbines in the USA because they supposedly infringed on GE patents.
The thing is, GE copied Enercon technology via industrial espionage and patented it as their own.
This case is well known in the wind power sector.
For many years Enercon couldn't sell in the USA. This hurt them quite a lot financially vs their competitors.
Same way, Huawei is banned from sales in the USA. Just the excuse is different.
With regards to TSMC there is always a danger they could be pressured into pushing companies like Huawei out. Their main clients are NVIDIA, Apple, AMD, all US companies. They could threaten to move production to Samsung or GlobalFoundries for example to coerce TSMC. The US government could also threaten TSMC with denial of machine tools by placing them on the sanction list. It isn't realistic for them to do that, as TSMC can't be replaced in less than 3 years, but it could happen.
Someone like Apple even has enough capital they could have their own fabs, they simply chose not to do it.
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