U.S. hits Chinese Supercomputing big players, giving them Huawei treatment: ‘The Commerce Department on Friday took its broadest swipe yet at China’s supercomputing industry, imposing new export restrictions that effectively bar five major Chinese developers of next-generation, high-performance computing from obtaining U.S. technology”.
The Commerce Department blacklisted five more Chinese entities yesterday, all of which are involved in the production of supercomputers. By total number of units, China is the world leader in supercomputing, with 227 supercomputers compared to 109 in the U.S. – however the U.S. has the world’s two fastest units. Supercomputers can perform over a billion-billion computations a second and are used in weapon design and advanced encryption. Like much China tech, China’s supercomputers are built using U.S. components from suppliers like AMD, Advanced Micro, Intel and Nvidia. (Fortune)
Meanwhile, the ‘U.S. Chamber of Commerce has petitioned the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to revoke tariffs imposed on Chinese imports over the past two years and warned the White House against implementing further levies. “Tariffs are hidden, regressive taxes that are being paid by U.S. businesses and consumers,” the Chamber said. Last week, 600 U.S. companies urged President Trump not to proceed with threats to submit another tranche of tariffs”‘, summarizes Fortune.
This is simply confusing: government is adding tariff while the companies it wants to offer competitive advantages to compete are saying “No, thanks”. The 2020 U.S. election will be interesting indeed.
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Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has been spending time with Trump hoping to give it time to move some of its production out of China. That will be a redesign if Trump wins re-election. Yet, it is evident that Trump has changed many things in China. Take for instance, it is now possible for foreign companies to list in Chinese exchange. That has come as U.S. has pushed for China to open its market.
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