DOD Pushback on Huawei Shows Complexity of Tech Trade, ex-Australia PM Says

The U.S. effort to box out Huawei shows how complex and intertwined the issues are, said the Asia So­ciety Policy Institute president and a former deputy secretary of state. ASPI President Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, said many in the U.S. semiconductor industry told him their ability to reinvest at the scale they need to remain dominant in the latest advances “hangs in part on their ability to export to China.” He asked, if the government bans those exports, will it “then step in to supplement on the order of tens of billions each year?” Rudd and ex-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte discussed the U.S.-China relation­ship at an ASPI event Tuesday. Negroponte said it's revealing that the Pentagon is resisting Commerce Department moves to restrict exports to Huawei. “It’s the Department of Defense finally calling to our attention this issue is more complex than it may seem. This technological war is going to be complicated,” he said. The U.S. makes 45 percent of semiconductors; China, 5 percent. That same day, the U.K. announced it won't bar Huawei from its 5G networks but will ban it from the “core” of those networks (see 2001280074). “Sounds like a great British fudge to me,” said Rudd.