President Trump is on a mission to break the ties between Chinese tech companies and American tech companies. According to Mr. Trump, Huawei spies for the Chinese government. Mr. Trump made that claim when he started his trade war with China. A couple of American tech companies put that bug in Trump’s ear, and he used it to gain leverage in trade talk negotiations.
Mr. Trump banned Huawei from doing business in the U.S. this year. But he immediately allowed the giant tech company to continue to do business in the U.S. for 90 days. That 90-days license expired in November and Trump immediately renewed the license for another 90-days. If Trump permanently barred Huawei right now, the trade talks with China would go up in smoke.
But in order to keep the pressure on Huawei while Trump tries to pressure China to change the way it handles their international companies Attorney General Barr put out a statement that confirms Trump’s spy theory. Mr. Barr told the press Huawei and ZTE spy for China. Barr said all tech companies that currently use products from those two companies should replace them with American components.
In order to reinforce Barr’s message to American tech companies the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put out a statement that confirms Trump spying theory. The FCC vote 5-0 and barred their rural carrier customers from using government money to purchase components from ZTE and Huawei. Evidently, there’s an $8.5 billion government fund set up to help rural customers upgrade their technology.
The FCC also order their rural customers to remove and replace all Huawei and ZTE equipment from existing networks. Huawei does a lot of business selling telecom equipment, and it appears Trump found a way to make sure Huawei and ZTE feel the pain of his trade war. The FCC did Trump and Barr’s dirty work at this point in time due to the phase one debacle. China won’t agree to Trump’s demand that the tariffs stay in place after China agrees to sign the farm portion of the deal.
But it’s not just Huawei, ZTE, and other Chinese techies that feel Trump’s tariff addiction first-hand. Bill Gates had a lot to say about the damage Trump continues to cause in the tech sector of America’s economy. Mr. Gates told the press he tried to build an experimental nuclear reactor in China, but Trump’s restrictions on foreign investments made it impossible to continue the project. Gates also said dropping his reactor project is a five-year setback for U.S. technology.
