Trump always like to go against the mainstream. While other US officials are trying hard to block out Huawei, Trump slap hard in their faces.
Thank you for bringing things back on subject.
I was actually just going to write about this.
I do not think this is Trump being contrarian. Sometimes I think the world underestimate him and think him a pure buffoon, but he is not. At least not to the extent his enemies seem to think.
It is worth noting the almost sea change in attitudes on key western allies overnight over this precise issue.
Italy has rebuffed American pressure; Britain has cleared Huawei; even New Zealand is back-pedaling claiming there never was a ban on Huawei.
Germany was already leaning heavily towards allowing Huawei anyways, add the momentum of these recent decision, it seems like an almost certainty that Germany will follow suite. Where British and Germany leads together, the EU tend to follow.
It looks like Trump got briefings on which way the wind was turning, and decided to cut his losses and make a costless tweet that he can try and leavage some goodwill out of at least from China during the upcoming trade negotiations.
If and when the EU does make its decision not to ban Huawei, you can bet much of the MSM, especially the American ones, will be attributing most of the credit/blame (depending on their masters’ positions on Trump) to Trump’s tweet in shifting the balance.
While such transparent moves will cut no ice with the Chinese negotiators, it looks like Trump is laying the groundworks for a much bigger play - offering Huawei a slice of the American 5G and broader telecoms market.
While this might sound like a fanciful idea in the current climate, one has to consider the magnitude of the impact an EU decision to effectively adopt Huawei 5G would have.
With China and the EU on one standard, America would be the minority standard. In the battle for domination of new tech standards, economies of size matters significantly. As does first mover advantage; raw capabilities and costs.
Huawei’s 5G tech dominates the competition in all but the final field.
For America to cling to their already failed strategy of trying to freeze Huawei out would be to compound their error, as adapting a significantly inferior technical standard at home; at a later date, and one that is not compatible with the dominant standard of the rest of the world would be disastrous for American firms in the competition to develop next gen commercial tech and services that will take full advantage of 5G.
It will be like trying to develop today’s digital economy while being limited to dail-up modems.
I expect Trump to dangle the carrot of allowing Huawei to participate in American 5G, and also end the unofficial blacklisting of Huawei products by all American carriers (all the lawfare against Huawei will also stop of course); and offset with the threat of continued legal troubles and potentially a components sales ban like the one they hit ZTE with if China doesn’t take the deal.
While Huawei is no ZTE and should not be crippled by an American components ban, such a ban would nevertheless cost them significantly.
The true make or break question is just what Trump expects in return for these sweeteners and an end to the broader trade war that he started.
But needless to say, the costs and damage to American pawns like Canada and Australia, who stupidly lead the charge against Huawei and China will not even be considered by Trump, especially if he needs to make costly concessions to China for those sins to be forgiven.
America might not care much about what becomes of them, but China will. So I expect Canada and Australia to continue to suffer the fallout of their stupidity long after America and China have made nice and went back to business as usual.
