Understanding the collateral damage from Trump’s trade aggression

President Donald Trump might be back on friendly terms with China’s President Xi Jinping, but his efforts to kill Huawei’s business produced friendly fire, hitting companies based in allied nations.

This is the unintended and unavoidable consequence of a targeting a single company or country with sanctions and tariffs, the US’ version of an economic dirty-bomb; such are the complexities and wide-spread nature of today’s global supply chains, you are going to cause damage to innocent parties. We suspect Trump does not care, as long as his objectives are achieved, but here we’re going to have a look at the indirect friendly-fire.

The Nikkei Asian Review has broken down Huawei’s latest smartphone, the P30, listing off the individual components of the device and also giving an estimation of cost. Japan supplies the largest proportion of components for the device, 53.2% or 869 parts, while the US supplies 0.9% of the components and South Korea provides 34.4%. Interestingly enough the costs tell a slightly different story.

The financial output from Huawei is an interesting split. It is estimated that a P30 costs $363.83 to manufacture, with 38.1% of the expenditure remaining with Chinese suppliers. The 15 parts supplied by US firms account for $59.36 per device with Micron Technology collecting $40.96 for its DRAM chipset. Japanese suppliers gain $83.71 for every device manufactured, while $28 heads to South Korea and $28.85 to Taiwan.

What is important to consider when you are assessing the friendly-fire is the direct and indirect impact of Trump’s actions. The direct impact is easily measured; by banning US companies from working with Huawei you can see the financial detriment of losing a customer. If you go one stage further, you can see the indirect impact. By taking a shot at Huawei, less devices are being sold, therefore less cash is being paid out to every supplier.

The table below gives an overview of some of the international organizations which have been impacted by Trump aggression towards China:

Estimates courtesy of Nikkei Asian Review

What is worth noting is the aggression towards Huawei is temporarily on hold. At the G20 Summit this weekend, the US and China have made positive statements about getting trade talks back on track, though this would mean Trump would have to stop his campaign of terror against Huawei. Suppliers to the firm will be relieved, but you have to wonder whether the damage has already been done to the smartphone business.

Just like the telcos for networking equipment, consumers will want assurances the devices will continue to work over the lifetime of the product. As Google is a US firm, and therefore subject to the Entity ban, consumers were much less likely to buy a Huawei device when there is no guarantee Android will work as effectively and securely as it should.

The statements from the two Premiers are all well and good, but considering Trump’s opinion seems to change as often as the tides, how can anyone guarantee the effectiveness of the Android operating system over the course of the device’s lifetime? There are other factors to consider here, Huawei’s homegrown OS for example, but this is an unknown factor and consumers rarely trust the unknown en-masse.

This is where we believe the damage has already been dealt; it takes a lot to earn consumers trust but not much to lose it. Huawei has been gathering momentum in the smartphone market for years, and entry onto the Entity List might have set it back to the beginning. Rumours have emerged suggesting the company is preparing for a 40-60% decline in shipments for the remainder of 2019; how long will it take the firm to recapture these customers?