Old Angry Child Throws Another Sand Bomb — Consequences Be Dammed
Banning global chipmakers from selling to Huawei if they create their products with US manufacturing equipment leads to isolation.
With a lot of fanfare and communicated by all kinds of people in the US Trump administration it was announced that the restrictions on Huawei to buy equipment have been tightened. Now it is not only forbidden to directly buy chips and other components from US manufacturers. It’s also already been forbidden to sell US-made chips and equipment by non-US suppliers. Now, it will also be forbidden to sell anything that was built by a non-US company that uses US manufacturing equipment.
Here is the link to the article.
There are many people cheering and saying things like:
“Finally we stick it to the Chinese!” –“America first — these guys will not be able to compete if we no longer give them our components”.
“Our leaders are following through and show the Chinese who’s boss!”
If you listen to small kids and what they say when they feel they won in something or accomplished something, its exactly the same words — just without “Chinese”.
The big issue is that small children celebrating their perceived wins always occur without any thought about the consequences. They eat a piece of dog poop just to make sure the other kid can’t get it.
They throw sand out of the sandbox and pretend it is a weapon keeping other kids away, soil them and make them cry.
That’s where we are in this ridiculous fight with China.
The first restrictions against Huawei were released in early 2019. Does anybody seriously believe they did not start immediately developing everything they can to be independent of US suppliers?
They probably also discussed with their remaining suppliers to get chips and other components not made with US tools and production equipment?
China has long been working towards IT and AI superiority. The restrictive measures only push China to do it faster. We are providing the reasoning on a silver platter why no US companies will have access to the Chinese/Asia market in the future.
In addition, as China will keep growing and understand that it can make sensible offers to help and develop to its neighbors, especially Russia, India, and some other large population countries in the region, it will become an issue of “who do you choose”.
Russia has already chosen and it chose China
India is still not sure and is dreaming of their own path. That’s understandable but I think that train has left the station. There is no light to shine between Europe, China (with Russia), and the US.
The big disadvantage for the US is the huge Pacific Ocean being a barrier that the countries of Asia don’t have to cross when collaborating amongst each other.
Right now we in the US are the children sitting in the sandbox and throw sand believing that would change the world for us. We have the weapons to throw stuff.
The kids outside the box are not retreating. They just find their own box and due to better educations, centralized decision making, global education in top universities around the world that brings their kids back with highly sophisticated abilities, they will build better sandboxes.
These new sandboxes will not only have more features and are more fun to play in, attracting more and more children from other places around the world to want to play there, and with those kids. The new sandboxed also come with very high walls.
That will lead to a situation where the US is in one sandbox (market) and the rest of the world is playing together in another sandbox (market) with different equipment.
Turning back from playing in sandboxes to real markets this will lead to a situation where the talent of the globe will play where the most amazing toys are being produced and released — and they can mostly do it from home using Zoom.
We have not reflected on our situation before throwing more sand. Think about it:
What has Apple really invented that changed the world since the iPhone? — and they will be put on the unreliable list in China and potentially forbidden to sell their phones — just like Huawei is forbidden to sell phones and other products in the US.
Amazon — yes, cool, but Alibaba and several others do the same in China/Asia — and they do it better because their banking and payment systems are much much much more sophisticated.
Banking maybe? — No. You can ask anybody in Europe or Asia: “can you send me a check” and they will ask you with a puzzled face: “what is a check”? Here a payment that started electronically through your online banking is transferred by banks to paper and mailed to you via check — think your last refund from Costco.
Transportation maybe? — no, that’s not it either. All the batteries for Tesla come from China or are based on Chinese patents and recently Tesla inked a deal for better batteries, again with a Chinese company.
Energy? — nope. China and Asia dominate the solar panel market.
Computer chips for sure — that’s why we stick it to Huawei. One of the few bastions left where we dominate. — note really either. The majority of chips Huawei uses are coming from Europe these days or are made in Huawei factories. The equipment to make chips comes from ASML, a Dutch company.
Now that we threw even more sand towards China they will build their new and improved sandboxes even faster. In a year or two, while we are finally recovering fully from Covid19, they will only laugh at us. We will sit in our old sandbox and wonder why we are not allowed to play with the kids on the other side of the Pacific ocean?
Why is a market of 3.5 billion people that would potentially be interested in our products closed to us? It’s because we behaved like little children eating dog poop and throwing sand without thinking about the consequences.
I am a globalist and I don’t like to sit on the sides, read the announcements of the government and not at least provide my perspective. Yes, it is biased. On the other hand, I was born in Europe and live in the US for the last 25 years and I have wonderful relationships with people all around the globe
I can’t and don’t want to be involved in the political aspects of all of this. Still, I ask myself how we as normal individuals who try to live our lives to the best of our abilities can observe what’s happening and react in a positive way.
I can’t change global politics. I can observe the sandboxes around the globe from a position akin to sitting on the ISS space station. By the way, I would be sitting there with European and Russian colleagues. No Chinese because the US decided they need to be banned. That’s why China is currently building their own space station and will invite all nations other than the US to participate and co-create. But that’s another sand fight to illuminate another time.
With the things described above, I feel good that I founded AH Green Homes LLC and developed the Ideal Wealth Grower system. No matter what happens in all these sandboxes across the globe, people will always need shelter and I am helping people who like to become investors in residential real estate using the IWG system to provide nice houses for rent.
It’s a much smaller sandbox and we eliminated all sand, so there is nothing to throw. All we do is collaborate to achieve our goals together, in harmony, and with respect. Nobody is better than the next person and by sharing our resources and networks, we all win. Maybe that is a model that can help the big shots we see in the media to realize there are other successful ways to create a better future.
