The Europeans would have been just fine with working with the US against China. The problem is that the “great negotiator” thought that what would be really brilliant would be to first attack your allies, and then ask them to help you when going up against your enemy.

What seems strangely forgotten in these discussions is that the first round of tariffs the Trump administration imposed on anybody, was steel tariffs on the Europeans.

No other country in the world has absolutely any reason to trust the US, especially now that the government cannot even be trusted to act in their own selfish interests (but rather, is dependent on the whims of 1 extremely stable genius).

To me the American tradition of a politicised diplomatic corps is to blame. The politics of Trump is just very far from mainstream European politics.

I am personally convinced that had the campaign against Huawei been done by the Obama administration there would be no Huawei technology in the EU at this point.

For one thing, when he required the Europeans to increase their NATO contributions he did it quietly, without publicly insulting them, and got them to commit to increase it over a period of a decade, which is reasonable. Unlike stand he never threatened America’s commitment to NATO itself.

For another, his first major international economic action wasn’t dropping steel tariffs on his Europeans allies.

And finally, he worked with his European allies to build an effective deal with Iran, that gave Europeans something they wanted and reduced the threat of additional war in the Middle East, whole building an effective counter balance to the Saudis, instead of flippantly and unilaterally tearing it apart causing European allies unnecessary political, military, and economic headaches.

And because 5G decision making hadnt really begun until early last year.

This is literally, the ultimate Trump card, that Trump himself will play.

If TSMC does this, then they will not only lose Huawei, but they will lose the entire 1.4 billion population market of China. As well as Africa, and likely, Southeast Asia, and India, and Pakistan too. They will probably also lose Eastern Europe, and Russia too. They’ll also probably lose South America too, and the Middle East.

This move might actually kill Android as we know it. Google will lose their preeminence and importance in mobile devices, and operating systems technology. They would also even lose their relevance in the search engine market. They will continue to do fine in the western markets.

This might even make ARM an irrelevant sideshow, and push RISC-V to the forefront. The world could even bifurcate into ARM vs. RISC-V.

Why? Because China will go full throttle and build out their own foundries. Huawei will now push their Harmony OS to the forefront. They’ll make it run on their own Kirin processors, that they built in China. They might even make it run on other processors, like the RISC-V.

Then the other Chinese mobile phone makers will all switch too, knowing that Trump, and the USA now has a target painted on all of their backs.

Alibaba is at the forefront with their RISC-V processor, that they can probably supply this to the other Chinese mobile phone companies.

Now, Intel, AMD, and nVidia, which make billions of dollars from China, will all have a target on their backs, and will end up losing the entire Chinese market too. Good move Trump, you just put 2 bullets into each of your best hardware companies.

Now, the world will have two standards: the western companies of Apple, Intel, nVidia, Google. Versus the upstart Chinese companies that will compete against them, lead by Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent. They will first dominate the Chinese market, and then they will expand out to Africa, Southeast Asia, and all the other southern third world countries. These countries were never going to buy a $1200 flagship iPhone 12 anyways.

This will indeed, be the most exciting technological challenge of this decade. And we are about to have front row seats, as we watch it play out.

But for an American strategic perspective I think it would have made more sense to keep the Chinese dependent on American operating systems and Taiwan produced chips.