Forbes magazine： The United States shamefully persecuted Huawei because Huawei was too successful.

　　American Forbes magazine published on December 10.

　　Author: John Tamny, a well-known American economist and columnist of Forbes magazine. He has books such as "Let Economics Return to Common Sense".

　　As we all know, at the request of American authorities, Canadian police arrested Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou last week. Canada complied with the requirements of the United States, which itself was frightening. Financial commentator Zachary Karabell believes that this arrest "It’s like China arrested Jobs’ daughter if she was helping to run Apple.”。

　　Therefore, although Trump administration officials claimed that President Trump had no knowledge of the arrest, he was having dinner with the Supreme Leader of president, China. No kidding, Trump certainly knows, or will soon know.This arrest is so bizarre and unreasonable that Trump must know about it..

　　This arrest is ridiculous. Trump and his government are playing with fire, and the market reaction also confirms this truth. Trade protectionism itself is stupid and goes against the interests of American workers and enterprises. Trade protectionism combined with the arrest of outstanding business leaders in other countries is very dangerous. As Carla Bell said, considering what the current White House owner has done, it is conceivable that important American business figures (such as Tim Cook of Apple) were arrested in China. The Trump administration has crossed the line. Yes, the Trump administration should be blamed for this matter. This kind of thing could not have happened without the approval of the authorities.

　　Republicans reacted equally shamelessly to the demands made by the Trump administration. Ben Sasse, an honest senator from Nebraska, told The New York Times: "The United States thanks our partner Canada for arresting the CFO of the China telecom giant because it violated the US sanctions policy against Iran." Kyle Lu Biao, a senator from Florida, also responded by saying that China Telecom should be prohibited from operating in the United States. Lu Biao’s proposal will destroy the basic economy, which I will talk about further later.

　　At present, we should not only pay attention to the US authorities’ claim that Huawei violated US sanctions and sold communication equipment containing US components to countries with sanctions such as Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. This incident has angered some political classes in the United States, and at the same time, it has profoundly reminded this class of the United States how microscopic their understanding of the economy is.

　　Simply put,American enterprises have been trading with "Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria". They trade through middlemen. In order to better understand this matter, let’s look back at the oil trade ban "imposed" by Arab countries on the United States in the 1970s, but this ban actually has no deterrent effect. History textbooks tell us that Arab countries stopped selling oil to the United States because of this, but this is not true. Through producers in countries without trade restrictions, "Arabian oil" still keeps flowing into the United States. Dating back to World War I, the United States imposed a trade embargo on Germany. And the result? The volume of goods exported by the United States to Scandinavian countries soared. American producers are still trading with Germany, but they only need countries near Germany as intermediaries.

　　The above can help us understand American trade control, which is actually a meaningless policy. As long as American enterprises are still producing, as long as the countries mentioned just now (that is, hostile countries of the United States) still have demand, American enterprises will still trade with those hostile countries. They will not "directly" violate the law, but production itself means trading with everyone, because there is no record of the final destination of the goods. In the jargon of the basketball club, although the San Antonio Spurs indicated that they would not trade forward Kawhi Leonard to Western Conference teams, they could not stop the Toronto Raptors from trading Leonard to their Western Conference rivals.

　　Let’s look at Huawei again. Huawei is currently the second largest smartphone manufacturer in the world and a global leader in communication equipment.From this incident, we can know that the persecution of Huawei by the United States against Huawei’s trade with hostile countries is to find fault with its eggs. Unless Huawei stores all its products, for the reasons explained above, Huawei sells so many smart phones and communication equipment that these products will eventually reach Iran. As I have repeatedly said, we don’t have any record of the final destination of the goods.This incident is extremely stupid. Simply put, the US government persecuted Huawei only because of its success.

　　Let’s talk about Lu Biao’s legislative proposal. If we still remember the American definition of Sino-US trade relations, then the fact that the United States blocked Huawei deserves our attention. According to the definition of the United States, we should be completely open to them, but the other side forbids all our enterprises to sell their products in China. But this is not the case for Huawei. Huawei mobile phones can’t be found in AT&T stores, not because the quality of Huawei mobile phones is not high, but because it is illegal to sell Huawei mobile phones. The reason behind this is very suspicious.

　　As an extremely successful telecom company, Huawei’s products can’t appear on the shelves in the United States, just because the United States regards it as a national security threat. The reasons given by the American political class can be described as ridiculous and out of thin air. They said that Huawei has a close relationship with the government of China, and the use of Huawei’s mobile phones and equipment will cause a devastating blow to the United States, because Huawei may engage in espionage. Oh, my God … …

　　In fact, the close relationship between American telecommunications companies and the federal government is the real threat. They can even persuade the government to resort to destructive protectionism. American mobile phone manufacturers are lucky (20% of Apple’s sales come from China).At least China has not strictly restricted the sale of our best brands in China.

　　The main problem now is that under the pretext of national security, someone lied that China would monitor us through our mobile phones. Well, what will they do? President Trump’s tweets about China constantly remind us that the United States is a huge market for China enterprises. Since the United States is the largest market for China enterprises, should we believe that the same China government will monitor us and be the enemy of this largest market?

　　This whole Huawei thing is ridiculous. It is purely a protectionist act.The deeper reason is that the American political class blatantly confuses the concept of economics. Worst of all, this incident is actually very dangerous. If people can be arrested casually because of protectionism, we have reason to guess that the next step may be to shoot at will.

　　To sum up, since Trump entered the White House, we have always heard that he is surrounded by people who are proficient in diplomacy, and the importance of trade to world peace has been repeatedly emphasized. Now, it’s time for this wave of people in the government to stand up and show a different attitude, unless they have lost their minds. There is no doubt that the fact that Meng Wanzhou was arrested is too bad.