Can the US similarly turn to alternative Huawei?
There was a piece about this on the radio a few months ago. It's actually a big deal. My memory isn't exact, because of the passage of time, but essentially, China needs America's soybeans because it can't grow enough of them on its own. And it needs the soybeans to feed its livestock in order to feed its people.
The natural thought is, "China can just buy soybeans elsewhere." Which is true. Except that there are not enough countries producing soybeans for export to fill the quantity that China requires.
A more important problem for China is seasonality. When America's soybeans are ready to harvest, Brazil's soybeans are just being planted, and vice versa.
So it leaves China eventually in a position where it can't/won't get soybeans from the U.S., Brazil doesn't have any soybeans to send, and none of the other countries can make up the defecit.
Therein lies the rub.
Edit: Commodities are fungible. They are things like gold, pork bellies, soybeans, and so on where there is no meaningful difference based on where they were produced. Buyers from some third country will buy soybeans from the USA, relabel them as originating in their country, and flip them to China for a profit. Trade circumvention is nothing new[1]. The US seller doesn't even have to be complicit, once they deliver to the third party they have no control over the labeling and they're not liable to care much either.
Edit: Regarding 5G hardware: "The basic idea is that there is little differentiation between a commodity coming from one producer and the same commodity from another producer. A barrel of oil is basically the same product, regardless of the producer. By contrast, for electronics merchandise, the quality and features of a given product may be completely different depending on the producer."[2] So, no, 5G hardware is not a commodity.
[1] https://agmetalminer.com/2017/05/24/what-is-trade-circumvent...
This isn't happening. US farmers are not selling as many soy beans as they used to. The year over year soy bean export decline was in the billions of dollars.
This massive piece of land may not have the effective and modern agriculture industry of USA but with enough investment and stable demand, it could have.
Russia is going places in the world of agriculture. It is a sector that is like telecoms in that a country that is behind can leapfrog the West by putting in new infrastructure.
This agricultural trade is working out with new markets sought for organic produce, 'kosher' food items and plenty else. It is also two way so Russia is best buddies with Turkey these days with agricultural trade being part of the deal.
Recently Russia signed up to have Huawei put in their 5G network. There is an on-going ambition to boost bilateral trade between China and Russia. Although dollar denominated, this trade is really 'barter', China get their soybeans, Russia get their 5G network. It is a win-win for both sides.
Also to remember is that Russia has had sanctions that have led to a certain level of self sufficiency. Hence the emphasis on the agricultural sector as well as manufacturing things like cars. Weapons sales are part of the picture too, good for foreign currency reserves.
I think patience is running out in China and in Russia with the UK/USA and their vassal states. The recent efforts to start conflict in Venezuela and Iran have been met with resolve from both China and Russia.
The world was unipolar after 9/11 with Western dominance in telecoms. Now it is a multi-polar world and all of that early dominance in mobile telecoms has evaporated. Had the UK/USA not been fighting pointless wars in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya (to name a few) then I don't think this situation of backwardness would have arisen.
(Gasp), Chinese people face hard times of eating lots of fish, shellfish and Laminaria kelp for some months...
Who’s interest would it serve for the US to be entirely dependent technically from a company with published ties to the CCP state security apparatus.
I'm sure it was a mistype, but China halted soybean purchases (not sales) from US soybean farmers and now possibly other agricultural products.
China imports 63% of traded soybeans.
The US accounts for 38% of exported soybeans.
Based on that alone, China is going to have to reduce its soybean consumption.
This is beyond one of those silly games where one country puts up a wall, so everyone else just navigates around it and wastes money on shipping.
Even though, on the whole, China exports a lot to the US and imports little (about 4 to 1 I think), China is a big food importer and the US is a big food exporter. When the US starts hitting Chinese companies with tariffs or through license restrictions, China doesn't have much space to retaliate because they have already closed off as much of their market as they can and only really import food in large quantities for consumption inside the country. They can't restrict imports of integrated circuits because we are doing that to them on our end and that basically leaves advanced medical technology and petroleum as strong retaliatory targets for China which China desperately wants.
Of course, the consumer ultimately pays for tariffs, or scarcity in this case, so we can expect the costs of food to rise in China. Couple this with the slowing economy and the recent devaluing of Chinese currency it could be a squeeze on the Chinese middle class.
Edit: Apparently I can't edit it.
According to this past Sunday's New York Times, the play here is that Trump raised tariffs on China this time because it refused to stop selling fentanyl to the United States. Naturally, this will be a big play in rural states where it's a big problem.
For some reason, the Times was the only place I saw this reported. Every other medium I looked at just glossed it over as "Evil Trump is raising tariffs on China and that means your iPhone will cost more!"
But oddly I didn't hear about this until your post. So thanks for mentioning it.
But that's the problem with so much noise, when there is a sliver of signal, it just gets lost.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-ch...
One month later: "Most fentanyl is now trafficked across US-Mexico border, not from China"
https://wjla.com/news/nation-world/most-fentanyl-is-now-traf...
Because Mexico is importing fentanyl precusors from China and taking over distribution like everyone predicted. Not much more China can do, you can't exactly ban basic chemistry.