The ‘phase one’ trade deal “was a temporary stopgap measure to get across a period of time; that time has gone, and a new regime is in power in the United States,” says Professor Richard Wolff. He tells Boom Bust that “Everything now depends on what initiatives the Biden administration is taking.”
“Let me add one kind of caution: if we continue to go after Huawei and other Chinese companies, basically by suggesting they have quiet relationships with the government and the military in China, that could come back to haunt us,” he says.
Wolff stresses that all the leading US tech companies, like Apple, Google, and Microsoft, “have complicated relationships” with the United States’ government and the US military.
“If you are going to establish a precedent that this is not trustworthy, then we may be in the end putting our own companies in as much danger as we have put Huawei. This would be again a step in the wrong direction,” he says.
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