Industry quietly lobbies against Trump’s anti-globalisation agenda

Slowing down the progress made by Huawei on the global stage might be a win for the White House, but US firms are not seeing the benefits as some are reportedly lobbying against the infamous ban.

In a televised interview this morning, Huawei Founder Ren Zhengfei suggested sales forecasts will be negatively hit by the firms debut onto the US ‘Entity List’, taking two years to get back onto the 2018 trajectory. For the White House, this might be vindication of its aggressive anti-Huawei agenda, but not everyone is happy about how events are unfolding.

According to Reuters, US semiconductor firms are quietly lobbying the US Department of Commerce in an attempt to limit the negative impact of the ban. Let’s no forget that while the White House might seem against globalisation trends right now, the success of these firms is largely based on the idea of free-trade and capitalising on the rapid evolution of international markets.

The issue which these firms face is one of commercial loss and gain. Huawei is one of the industry’s biggest consumers of semiconductor products, with the firm rumoured to spend roughly $20 billion a year on such products. When you look at the impact on some firms, you can see why the semiconductor industry is getting a bit twitchy.

Last week, Broadcom lowered its sales forecast for the year by $2 billion, pointing towards one of its customers being caught up in an international trade-war. Although Broadcom has not explicitly stated how much of the total revenues are attributable to Huawei, firms are only compelled to do so when it is more than 10% of the total, the numbers would suggest it is not far off that percentage.

And Broadcom is not alone on relying on Huawei as a customer. Qorvo depends on Huawei for 11% of its total revenues, while Lumentum has said Huawei accounted for 18% of all shipments during the last quarter. As a result, Lumentum’s sales forecast is now $30-35 million less for the year. Xilinx is another chipmaker which has been impacted by the ban on selling components to Huawei, and there are others as well including Intel and Qualcomm.

As a result, numerous lobbying efforts are reportedly being held behind closed doors to mitigate the impact. This might be exemptions or the creation of loopholes, but the friendly-fire is quite notable in this segment.

What is worth noting is that there are other lobby efforts going on also. Google is rumoured to be in active conversations, suggesting its operating system Android should be exempt from the ban on the grounds of national security. Google is arguing that should it be banned from working with Huawei, it would not be able to provide timely security updates which could make the devices vulnerable to hacking and data breaches.

However, there is a commercial angle to all of these arguments which might gain more traction in the minds of the government puppeteers.

At Google, the firm has a dominant position in the OS market. Huawei’s alternative OS might not be able to dislodge this position, but it does have a significant domestic market to drive user adoption. If a suitable alternative to Android emerges from the Chinese telco flagbearer, it would not be unimaginable to see mass adoption in the Chinese market. Once it has domestic domination, it would not be unusual to see international expansion to the China-friendly nations. This would potentially erode Google’s influence on the world.

In the semiconductor space, the risk is of the emergence of a homegrown Chinese-semiconductor industry.

This is not to say China does not already have a presence in the semiconductor space but forcing Huawei away from the US could be the catalyst the slumbering sector needs. Companies like Shenzhen Fastprint Circuit Technologies and Jiangsu Changjiang Electronics Technologies have been making financial gains in recent months, both in terms of revenues and share price, while Huawei’s HiSilicon has also been ramping up.

The US is dominant in the semiconductor market and will probably continue to be. There is a gap in competence for core technologies in the Chinese segments to eclipse this position, though the risk is erosion of profits. The more competitors there are on the market, the lesser the market share for US firms. This assumption might well be exaggerated when you consider the preference of Chinese firms for a homegrown supply chain.

For the semiconductor industry, this should be seen as a red-flag. The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has already suggested the industry is in a bit of a slump at the moment, with sales for April down 14.6% year-on-year. The SIA does have international members, though its biggest role is to represent the interests of US manufacturers. The last thing these firms need right now is more bad news when the market is already dampening.

The result of this friendly-fire is conversations behind closed-doors. The Trump administration is seemingly trying to dilute the influence of China on the rest of the world, though it appears to be having the same impact on some US firms. We’ve said this before, but the result of this trade-war seems to be nothing by a net-loss globally right now; no-one is winning, and it seems to be a matter of damage limitation.

What the White House should be wary of is whether this anti-China agenda is starting to look like a personal vendetta for the President. If there is notable damage to US firms as well as Chinese, the White House must question whether the current strategy is the most effective.

Is ‘Make America Great Again’ is the motto of the White House, it would be useful for the rest of us to understand how much friendly-fire will be tolerated in the quest to destroy the Silk Road.