A new front has opened up in the Trump administration’s ongoing trade war with China, while China has made its feelings clear about Sweden’s recent ban.
This time the setting is Brazil, where – according to a Reuters report late on Tuesday – a US trade delegation visiting the capital Brasilia offered financing to telcos that source network equipment from vendors other than Huawei.
The delegation was led by national security advisor Robert O’Brien, who met with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ahead of the signing of a bank financing agreement that paves the way for further cooperation between the two countries in several industry sectors, 5G being one of them.
Huawei, with its competitively-priced products, already supplies Brazilian telcos. However, with the government preparing to auction 5G spectrum next year, it is a good time for Washington to exert its influence in an effort to convince them to shop elsewhere.
“China has made a very significant move in Brazil. They’re Brazil’s biggest trading partner, so it’s something that we’re concerned about,” said US trade representative Robert Lighthizer, in the report.
The US does a fair amount of business with Brazil too. In 2019, the US exported $67.4 billion worth of goods and services there, and imported $37.6 billion. Both Trump and Bolsonaro are keen to increase trade, but it looks like Brazil will first have to toe the US line on Huawei.
Already this week we have seen Sweden close the door on Huawei. The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) on Tuesday banned operators from procuring new equipment from both Huawei and ZTE for use in networks rolled out in the 2.3 GHz and 3.5 GHz bands. Telcos planning to repurpose any of their current Huawei and ZTE gear for use in these networks must phase it out by the start of 2025.
That decision could have negative consequences for Swedish kit maker Ericsson though.
“Without any evidence, the Swedish side used national security as an excuse to groundlessly discredit Chinese companies, openly suppress Chinese telecommunications companies, and politicise normal economic cooperation,” said Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry in a pointed statement. “The Swedish side should uphold an objective and fair attitude, correct wrong decisions, and avoid negative impacts on Sino-Swedish economic and trade cooperation and Swedish enterprises’ operations in China.”
Still, Huawei has a somewhat unlikely ally in Japan – for now at least. According to reports last week, the government will decline to sign up to any framework that bans 5G equipment supplied by specific countries, and will instead take its own measures to assess the risk of using Huawei’s products. However, at the same time, Japan is also keen to strengthen cooperation with the US on cybersecurity, so it would come as little surprise if Tokyo subsequently falls in line with Washington.
With Sweden siding with the US, but Japan keeping its own counsel for the time being, it is perhaps too tricky at this point to predict which way Brazil will swing.
Japan has a de facto ban on Huawei. They were one of the first to do so and none of the operators are using them for 5G.
The government is keen to back Japanese industry to build their own 5G capability with NEC teaming up with DoCoMo. Check the Nikkei Asian Review article from July 16 on this.
It is Kungflu which has made USA, in part, the greatest nation on earth. I hope Biden can read this article.
Your previous article mentioned that NASA will team up with Nokia by using Ran techonogy. The purpose of that articles was trying to give people an impression RAN is a leading solution to telecoms especially in 5G. As a matter of fact, it has nothing to do with current 5g infrastructure as to which is better despite that NASA use it. Recently, lots of RAN advocates omit word “open” to RAN only since OPEN put this technology in a death sentence.
If you patiently finish reading my article, you will understand why NASA want to team up with Nokia, actually that is no difference to team up with hwahwei unfer trump hateful China policy.
Nokia telecom branch was completely a USA company in new Jersey Red Bank, homedal 2 decades ago with tens of thousands of Chinese engineers just like Hwahwei.
I lived in that environment 40 years ago, in red bank, homedal area in NJ near Bell lab, which employed with more than 30 thousand workers. In late 80s, this institution was split to Bell lab and Lucent. Lucent was operated under At&T as a profit driven private company. later it was saled to Alcatel French, and finally to Nokia Finland. When changed to Lucent, most Chinese and Indian engineers got laid off from Bell Lab and recruited to Lucent. Chinese and Indian engineers composed almost 75 percent in actual engineering work in Bell Lab. The rest of 20 to 30 percent were Whites America in project control and decision making post, and most of them preserved their job in Bell lab. All those Chinese and Indian engineers are all citizen of USA, they worked very hard and were loyal to Bell lab. Lots of Chinese engineer worked since 1940 to 1960. Those engineer were from China as a student during 1911 to 1948 and from 1998 to 2017 (Trump stop it) by gengzi war compensation refund scolorship treaty with China. One to two hundred students every year major mostly in science and engineeing. They were the best in China in one billion population. Bell lab, Nasa structure sytem , Texas intruments etc.. were their rooting place.
In Bell lab, those chinese engineer had helped White America project leader won more than a dozen Nobel prize. They always worked quietly behind the scene. Chinese engineers also won 4 nobel prize in their work. A chinese team help Dennis Ritchie wrote the C comiper and Unix os with its ecosystem
In late 70s and early 80s. The telecom routing infurstructure project written for US military was a proud work from Chinese team, certainly those are team works with lots of White America project leader.
During Sanfancisco earthquake in late 80s, a team with pure Chinese flew to SF to rescue the big area fragile telecom system by re-routing all network without phisical repair those facilities in a very short period of time.
The fiber optic transmission was also invented by chinese scientist in Bell lab in mid 80 and won a Nobil prize for Bell lab.
But why did breaking up Bell lab happen? At that time, we had a white supremacist God father William barr at his 40s. He at first was a lawyer consulting for Verizon and later worked for US goverment on the overhaul of infarstructure of telecommunication industry in USA.
He always visited Bell lab and was shocked by the office scene, a Asian work place full with Chinese and Indians, and with White America project controller who were mostly stayed in big closed splendied office. His mindset was: why Bell lab, not a profit driven but research institute supported by US government for a dozen of billions of dollars a year, should be given the resources and credentials to Chinese and Indian immigrants. So our genuine William barr, a telecom coordinator working for the USA government made a tricky game by creating a shell company At&t and owned Lucent, which most of skilled immigrant worker removed from Bell lab to Lucent. Later lucent was purchased by French Arctec and by Nokia Finland finally. This is the reason why USA can not have a solid 5g company, also William barr recently told the government to buy back Nokia. if Barr did not split Bell lab, USA will dominate world telecom industry.
Nokia has been
Drifted around for 20 years by lots of merging and without a central spirit to work, and lost lots of outstanding engineers. Losing those real engineers, original Bell Lab can not do nothing, had become a junk institution wasting lots of tax
Dollar.
Inside Nokia, more than half of engineers are Chinese, what is the difference between this company and hwahwei if they creat hateful thoughts after Trump and Pompal attacking Chinese in everyway they could, despite they were owned by Finland Nokia.
It’s the same to NASA structure system, Nastran system, which design all NASA hardware system for 70 years where most of engineers were PhDs and super PHDs. The stunning fact is 85 percent of engineersare are Chinese. Nastran was the system I worked almost 40 years ago. Should we bury nastran or make them proud of USA again. Nastran had similar history like Bell lab. In 60 to 70, Nastran solely worked and be paid by Nasa with nearly 60 percent of Chinese engineers work force. Why did I know the percentage of Chinese engineers 10 to 20 years ago in 1980, because I was a programmer in branch office in NJ at that time. When we tried to solve a big theorical problem, we had to overhaul the entire system. Those programs were written in first generation Fortran language. Traditionly , programmer wrote codes will leave their name and date and give a short description about the moudule in comments statement. From their name and their ackward English, similar as me, I could see those blood and tears were from those Chinese engineers who had been trying so hard for Nasa and Usa. That was how I got the statistic.
My project leader who was a Chinese ever visited a few very old Chinese engineers and knew they were students from Gengzi treaty and never returned to China all their life. During 1950 to 1980, there are lots of students flee out of communist China via Honkong, Sigapore, Taiwan to USA and later became work forces in Nastran. Tsmc founder Morris Chang was one of those students worked in Texas intrument.
Nastran branch had never been merged into NASA. Why? You probably know the answer. Finally, NASA decided to split this branch to a few company and providing full software resource with a leading company call MSC software.
Around in 1995 MSC acquired company Universal analytics and became an unique control company of Nastran system. Now NASA want to work with Nokia or Nokia want to work with Verizon, I believe William barr had a big role on it if you trace back the history.
I know USA may still can drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima without a few outstanding Chinese scientist, but I do know USA could not land on moon in 1969 without Nastran.
Trump once used “kungflu” to imply pandemic, but he did not know it is Kungflu that has helped to make USA the greatest nation on earth. Why did I know Bell lab and Nokia stories, because my environment was near Red Bank new Jersey 30 to 40 years ago, where lots of my classmates worked in Bell lab.
USA used to be a lovely and great country which I always told my Chinese family and friends. Four years ago, 10 years ago, 30 , 40 years ago my full heart was with USA that I was proud of, untill when Trump destroyed everything and I changed to have strong sympathy toward China. I believed 90 percent of Chinese America has the same feeling as me. I hope Biden can be a great President so that USA can bring all peoples together again.These stories do not need to be told if there is no Trump since we are all Americans. It is Trump who has devided this country.
Thank you so much for sharing such awesome details about America history and your personal experience! As an European I always have had curiosity about what “happened” to America ? Why do you loose so much pace since Motorola Mobility was selled to Nokia, why? What happened to NASA know how and expertise, why it can’t be applied to benefit and create an alternative to the national system? I have had so many questions.. thank you for answering some of them!
Be safe,
Greetings from Portugal , Humberto.
Nastran system can be accessed any place in the world as long as it’s affordable. Almost every university in USA can access it too in engineering department. Nastran system is the most valuable system in the world. NASA needs it to design every piece of equipments, and to calculate the load and the force of those products. The design of Aircraft, automobile, skyscraper, ship, dam, jet, weapons…you name it, all needs this system. Certainly you can design it manually, but it would take forever time, and the accuracy is very low. The automobile, the aircraft , cruise ship now are so comfortable and stable are all by Nastran’s work.
I do not believe any country can independently develop this system from scratch. A few thousands of engineers in total for 2 to 3 generations have devoted their life for 70 years period. This system may have contributed hundreds of trillions of dollars of value added product. That is why USA is such a strong country on earth.
Dont worry you and your fellow american chinese will be put in tin cans and send off back to your motherland soon
No body in USA say American Chinese, we say Chinese America. That means you are not an America, so you have no right to send us to anywhere.
You posted lots comments in this forum , but you seldom give your thoughts but just curse or intimidating other people. What the hell you are doing!
Tks, you can say more, hope Trump could read that
Should read:You can’t say….
With this sort of intimidating behaviour, and the Trump Administration is not labelled bullies ??