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The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

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Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#121

Post by dmoy »

ricw wrote: post #101
nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

It’s not just China that does this. This is a proven path for developing economies, that still have a labor price advantage. It’s the reason “Made in Germany” exists as a label, forced by the brits to mark “inferior goods” that turned out to be cheaper and better. Just like China now...

US theft of UK IP back in the day (early 19th century textiles especially) was a big deal.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#122

Post by creato »

Koremat6666 wrote: post #90
nimbius wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in a lot of cases the low-cost competitors are not only lower cost but have more features and/or better performance. They side-step a lot of the planned obsolescence and intentional feature scarcity US companies have become so dependent on to avoid meaningful R&D. Its hard not to see a lot of them as sort of a Robin Hood. On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US c…

> On topic though, Most of the pot-banging from Washington is at the behest of AT&T and other US carrier/handset/chip companies who are rightly livid that Huawei made it to market with 5G before they had a chance to monopolize it. This one sentence summarized everything.

I don't think that sentence actually makes any sense. AT&T and other US carriers probably don't care who manufactures their equipment. They make money on the service they sell.

The US doesn't actually have any vendor for most of this kind of equipment, the competitors here are either European or Chinese.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#123

Post by mdorazio »

jorblumesea wrote: post #95
mdorazio wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I'm not sure how TPP was actually supposed to accomplish what you're saying. As far as I know, TPP didn't restrict participants from trading with China, and it's not clear to me what would have economically discouraged them from doing so. Maybe I'm wrong - I genuinely want to know.

The text of the TPP basically ensured a "special trade relationship" between signers that outside, non-singers, would not be able to compete with. I would re-read the text of the TPP and see for yourself. It was basically a group trade agreement that guaranteed favorable exchanges. It's not that technically, they wouldn't be able to trade with China, but practically speaking, there was little chance.

I did read the text of TPP and it still isn't clear how it would have guaranteed that signers would not continue trading in large part with China. What I'm looking for is an actual economic analysis showing that TPP would have made it so that not trading with China carried a significant cost benefit in comparison to utilizing its market efficiencies and lower costs. I've yet to see such an analysis from a credible source, so I'm still working under the assumption that signers would have continued trading with China without any significant checks on its economy or policies.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#124

Post by mdorazio »

nl wrote: post #98
mdorazio wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how TPP was supposed to be a China containment strategy. I've heard this said a few times, but the explanations for how it was supposed to work always seemed like hand-wavey versions of "well, it would make US partnerships with non-China countries stronger and that would somehow contain China".

The TPP was absolutely designed to be a China containment strategy. The idea was to reduce trade barriers within the Pacific region, which would make trade there cheaper and hence more attractive vs China. Specifically, lower wage countries (Malaysia, Vietnam, Mexico) would have been more attractive as outsourcing locations compared to China, and in return good and services from high wage countries would have been ch…

Right, but you need to show that knocking down tariffs like the Vietnam one would actually directly result in more non-Chinese trade. I can pretty much guarantee that even without the 20% tariff, US imports would still be far more expensive than Chinese equivalents. Do you have any economic analysis articles or papers you can point me to that model the expected impacts based on actual market prices and labor costs?

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#125

Post by cmroanirgo »

nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

Exactly. All's fair in love and war... Provided you play by our rules, is what the companies are espousing.

Going out to plunder foreign countries for cheap labour and materials and then complaining when they begin to 'return the favour' so to speak, is just being woefully ignorant.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#126

Post by emptybits »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #45
thrownaway954 wrote: post #22

so what does this mean? do they haul all the executives and workers into court? what happens if they are found guilty? do the executives go to jail, is the company forced to shutdown, or do they just have to pay a fine and all is good. hell, do they even have to pay the fine? so many questions :(

Well, I am not an expert on that particular subject, but Huawei's CFO was arrested in Canada by the end of 2018. It seems US upped the ante a little and really decided to bring her in to face charges. Now that would bring some fireworks. I am not convinced China would not respond in kind.

> I am not convinced China would not respond in kind.

Indeed. In diplomatic retaliation, China responded to the Huawei CFO's arrest in Canada by quickly arresting two Canadians on charges without evidence or explanation. Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. These Canadians have been in Chinese detention for over a year without access to a lawyer or the ability to speak to family or loved ones. Canadian pawns in a USA-China game.

https://globalnews.ca/news/6410460/michael-kovrig-china-cana...

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#127

Post by KaoruAoiShiho »

jhallenworld wrote: post #103

Huawei clearly is on parity with western technology. The evidence is here: https://www.eetasia.com/news/article/Integrated-5G-Chips-Unv... And in particular, with its 5G modem: http://www.hisilicon.com/en/Products/ProductList/Balong Some news about this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-09/huawei-an... And also for the base stations: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/huawei-s-5g-ran-port...

It's clearly ahead in some respect and behind in others. Particularly ahead in 5G where it's the clear world leader, behind in video recording though. The P30's EIS is seriously garbage compared to iPhone.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#128

Post by thorwasdfasdf »

> "Huawei is alleged to have stolen source code for Company 1’s routers, which it then used in its own products."

I've never really understood how IP theft works. I've been a software engineer for a long time and I know that Reading and making sense of an existing million line code base is a hella of a lot harder than just writing new code from scratch. Why on earth would anyone want to steal source code from a competitor?

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#129

Post by mattmanser »

tharne wrote: post #43
nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

> It's hard to feel too sorry for these companies. It's not exactly a secret that this is how China operates and has operated for a very long time. I see this as a win-win. These U.S. companies tried to take shortcuts by outsourcing to China and they got burned. China engaged in all sorts of unethical and illegal behavior in the process and will (hopefully) get burned.

The irony of this comment is that this intellectual property theft is what America did in the 1700-1800s to get ahead.

And America eventually eclipsed the British that they were stealing from, so don't expect China to be "punished" too much.

Re: The U.S. is charging Huawei with racketeering

#130

Post by [deleted] »

nostromo wrote: post #18

> The DoJ alleges that Huawei and a number of its affiliates used confidential agreements with American companies over the past two decades to access the trade secrets of those companies, only to then misappropriate that intellectual property and use it to fund Huawei’s business. These American companies thought they could build their products for a fraction of the price in China and increase margins. They didn't sto…

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