Tag Archives: Huawei

Trump and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSMC)

May 18, 2020 By in semiconductor manufacturing, TSMC, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

Note:  the post just before this has a brief description of TSMC.

new restrictions on TSMC

Last week the Trump administration announced that foreign users of American-made semiconductor design software or production equipment will need permission from Washington to use these to fashion chips for Chinese telecom company Huawei, the world leader in 5-G wireless technology.

At the same time, TSMC announced that it will be opening a new $12 billion fab in Arizona in 2024, its second in the US.  No details yet on why, although presumably Washington is footing the bill.

my thoughts

Huawei is TSMC’s second-largest customer, after Apple.  60% of TSMC’s output goes to the US, 20% to China.

I’m a fan of TSMC as a company but not of TSM as a stock.  This is because I don’t have any edge in evaluating TSM.  I find Taiwanese accounting opaque and I believe a ton of local knowledge is needed to be successful in sizing up that market.  While the latter is true just about everywhere, Taiwan is, for me, an extreme case.

I wonder how this new Trump rule can/will be enforced.

What would I do if I were TSMC?  I’d see if I could rearrange assembly lines to avoid making Huawei chips using US-sourced machines.  My ultimate goal, however, would have to be to minimize the threat to my business by transitioning away from US equipment suppliers.  This might mean giving extra assistance to Japanese or EU companies, or encouraging technology transfer to develop Chinese alternatives.  It could mean moving advanced production equipment to foundries on the mainland to supply Huawei from there–making clear this output is not coming from Taiwan.  I’d probably be figuring I’d shed current generation US-made equipment I already own by moving it to the new US foundry.

If I were a current US supplier to TSMC?  If I wanted to keep TSMC business, I’d be starting to figure how to shift at the very least that part of my operations out of the US.  The same if I were a US-based maker of semiconductor design tools.

 

I think this will end up being another aspect of the “chaotic disaster” that is the Trump economic policy.  In this case, though, the purpose of the move appears solely to be to deflect attention from Trump’s worst-in-the-world response to COVID-19, in support of his lie that somehow not his bungling but Beijing and/or the Obama administration are responsible for the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Americans.

I continue to think that Trump and his enablers in government and the media are doing enormous damage to the long-term economic prospects of the US.  What strikes me most about the developing TSMC situation, however, doesn’t have much directly to do with the stock market.  It’s that Trump et al are concerned only about covering up what they’ve done; their cynical strategy is to lie and to distract by doing more harm elsewhere.  There isn’t the slightest hint of remorse for what they’ve done nor sympathy for the relatives of the death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trumponomics and Huawei

July 8, 2019 By in foreign trade, Strategy, tariff protection, tariffs, Trump, taxes and trade, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , 1 Comment

Effective May 16th, the Trump administration placed Chinese tech company Huawei on the entity list, meaning no American company can sell products, hardware or software, to Huawei without government permission.  In addition, the presumption of the administrators of the list is that permission will be denied.

Being on the entity list seems to mean no Intel or ARM-based microprocessors for Huawei-built computers and telecom equipment, and no Android software for its cellphones.

The US  had already been putting pressure on US telecoms, big and small, as well as allies around the world not to purchase Huawei offerings, especially of next-generation telecom infrastructure equipment–a difficult sell, given that Huawei products are better and cheaper than EU or US alternatives.  But the entity list move is a huge escalation.  It seems to pretty much put Huawei out of business unless/until it develops alternate sources of supply.

It seems to me that this decision is qualitatively different from taxing Chinese products entering the US.  The near-term effects are likely to be strongly negative for Hauwei; long-term consequences, in contrast, are likely to be strongly negative for the US, in a number of ways:

–by saying the US will not tolerate significant Chinese competition in tech industries, Mr. Trump is reframing a dispute about terms of trade into a struggle for cultural/economic dominance.  Arguably, this is what is really going on anyway, but making it explicit gives China a cause to rally around

–Beijing’s response to the Huawei decision will presumably be to try to jump start its domestic chip business, an area that is (oddly, to my mind) totally unimpressive despite having been a national priority for decades.  The obvious course for the US today, it seems to me, is to retrain workers and improve our education system, with emphasis on STEM subjects.  That, of course, is a non-starter for both major political parties

–US tech companies must now begin to think about whether they are American enterprises (meaning: willing to forgo Chinese business as/when Washington dictates) or multinationals based in the US.  This may not be a burning issue for mature US firms like Microsoft or Google, although Washington’s white supremacism and nativism are already compelling companies like this to locate research centers outside the US (either because the US will not admit accomplished foreign scientists or they fear for their safety).  For startups, however, Mr. Trump is making a compelling case that, say, Canada is a better place to establish themselves

–tech companies of all stripes will have to think long and hard before building new manufacturing capacity in the US

 

Pre-Huawei, one main consequence of the Trump trade strategy has been to substantially weaken the Chinese status quo’s resistance to shifting that economy away from low value-added exports.  With developing economies, such resistance is, in my experience, an almost insurmountable obstacle to progress.  Huawei gives Beijing a clear mandate to create a high-tech component industry, however.  Making it a victim of malign foreign influences only increases its power, given China’s century of humiliation (at foreign hands) historical narrative.

Taking Huawei off the entity list, which the administration now seems to be in the process of doing, does not, I think, return us to the status quo ante.  The barn door has already been opened.

 

So far as I can see, the US stock market has not reacted negatively to what I consider to be a collosal blunder.  Wall Street does continue to deal with the possibility of more tariffs principally, I think, by focusing on firms it sees to be the most immune–software, especially cloud-based, and potentially industry-transformative new market entrants in a variety of fields.

 

 

 

 

 

Trumponomics and tariffs

July 2, 2019 By in economics, foreign trade, macroeconomics, microeconomics, tariff protection, tariffs, Trump, taxes and trade, Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , , 1 Comment

Note:  I’ve been writing this in fits and starts over the past couple of weeks.  It doesn’t reflect whatever agreement the US and China made over the past weekend.  (More on that as/when details become available.)  But I’m realizing that it’s better to write something that’s less than perfect instead of nothing at all..  I think the administration’s economic plan, if that’s the right word for a string of ad hoc actions revealed by tweet, will have crucial impacts–mostly negative–for the US and for multinational corporations located here.  I’ll post about that in a day or two.

 

On the plus side, Mr. Trump has been able to get the corporate income tax rate in the US reduced from 35% to 21%, stemming the outflow of US industry to lower tax-rate jurisdictions (meaning just about anyplace else in the world).  Even that has a minus attached, though, since he failed to make good on his campaign pledge to eliminate the carried interest tax dodge that private equity uses.  The tax bill also contained new tax reductions for the ultra-wealthy and left pork-barrel tax relief for politically powerful businesses untouched.

 

At its core, international Trumponomics revolves around the imposition of import duties on other countries in the name of “national security,” on the dubious rationale that anything that increases GDP is a national security matter and that tariffs are an effective mechanism to force other countries to do what we want.  (Oddly, if this is correct, one of Mr. Trump’s first moves was to withdraw the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, thereby triggering an escalating series of new tariffs on farm exports to Japan by  our “Patriot Farmers,” many of whom voted for Mr. Trump.  I assume he didn’t know.)

If the Trump tariff policy has a coherent purpose, it seems to me to be:

–to encourage primary industry (like smelting) and manual labor-intensive manufacturing now being done in developing countries to relocate to the US (fat chance, except for strip mining and factories run by robots)

–to encourage advanced manufacturing businesses abroad that serve US customers to build new operations in the US, and

–to retard the development of Chinese tech manufacturing by denying those companies access to US-made components.

 

The results so far:

–the portion of tariffs on imported goods (paid by US importers to the US customs authorities) passed on to consumers has offset (for all but the ultra-wealthy) the extra income from the 2017 tax cuts

–the arbitrary timing and nature of the tariffs Trump is imposing seems to be doing the expected —discouraging industry, foreign and domestic, from building new plants in the US.  BMW, for example, had been planning on building all its luxury cars for export to China here, because US labor costs less than EU labor.  The threat of retaliatory tariffs by China for those imposed by the US made this a non-starter.

–Huawei.  This story is just beginning.  It has a chance of turning really ugly.  For the moment, inferior US snd EU products become more attractive.  Typically, such protection also slows new product development rather than accelerating it.  (Look at the US auto industry of the mid-1970s, a tragic example of this phenomenon.)   US-based tech component suppliers are doing what companies always do in this situation:  they’re  finding ways around the ban:  selling to foreign middlemen who resell to Huawei, or supplying from their non-US factories.  Even if such loopholes remain open, Mr. Trump is establishing that the US can’t be relied on as a tech supplier. Two consequences:  much greater urgency for China to create local substitutes for US products; greater motivation for US-based multinationals to locate intellectual property and manufacturing outside the US.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the Huawei questions

May 22, 2019 By in administration economic strategy, economic moats, economics, government economic policy, Huawei, macroeconomics, Uncategorized Tags: , , , 2 Comments

Huawei is a Chinese telecom company.  It makes niftier smartphones than Apple and has 5G technology that’s better than anything US companies can offer.  The company is certainly a competitive threat to US cellphone makers, as well as to manufacturers of telephone equipment worldwide.

The question that arises with a firm like Huawei, also the perennial question raised about dominant US tech companies since WWII, is the degree to which Huawei will act in the national interest of China.  That is, can/will Beijing eavesdrop on conversations or collect/alter data being carried on Huawei networks–maybe even stop them operating, if Beijing so chooses.

The Trump response to Huawei’s technological edge has been two-fold:  to blacklist Huawei, and to aid its US rival, Qualcomm.

Two questions:

1.is this the proper response?   …or is it like Mr. Trump’s invoking national security to price better-performing Asian and European cars to unaffordable levels, forcing citizens to buy US automobiles that three-quarters of the population now shun?

I’m guessing the former.

 

2. does Mr. Trump have a strategy?   Has he thought out the consequences of what he’s doing?

Here my guess is no.  Otherwise, he would have been promoting science education and welcoming skilled foreign scientists, rather than compelling tech firms to relocate their tech hubs to Canada and elsewhere.

(An aside, sort of:  I was recently listening to a podcast which dealt with Mr. Trump’s weak record in real estate by saying that he was rich before he started in the family business and he remained rich after negotiating treacherous waters during the 1980s.  Really?

My read of the president’s career:  he ended (prior to licensing his name and performing in a reality show) with about as much money in real terms as he started with.  So in that highly technical sense what the podcast said is right.  Over the same period, however, a run-of-the-mill real estate developer made, adjusting for risk, four times what Trump did.  A really competent real estate person might have made 10x.  In achieving his result, Mr. Trump was also aided by the public listing, debt refinancing and subsequent bankruptcy declaration of his Atlantic City casinos.  Although Mr. Trump prevailed in the litigation that ensued, as a professional investor I find this an eyebrow-raising episode.

Mr. Trump was “successful” in running a business in the sense that he went fishing during a time when tons of fish were jumping into the boat and he came back with the boat.  Nothing in it …though he was in the area where the most fish were to be had   …and he was soaking wet in a way that suggested he fell out at some point.

I’m also extrapolating from that.)

investment implications?

Throughout my investing career, politics has never made much of a difference.  In fact, to my mind professional investors who based their decisions on reading Washington’s runes simply revealed the poverty of their thought.  I think now is different.  Mr. Trump has exposed the surprising weakness of Congress.  The reality of China as a rival superpower to the US has been made clear.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trump is executing an early twentieth-century strategy to solve a twenty-first century dilemma.  Arguably, but not necessarily, this is a drama where the US is playing the role of post-WWI Britain and China is the 1920s US.  We all know how that worked out. By simultaneously discouraging innovation at home and forcing China to up the pace of its own tech progress, I think the administration is auditioning for the UK part, and thereby potentially doing significant long-term harm to the economy.  Ironically, those hurt most badly will likely be Mr. Trump’s most rabid supporters.  Withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership, for example, is already putting US farms at a disadvantage vs. Australian, Canadian and New Zealand rivals.

What to do?

I’m taking a two-pronged strategy in the US.  I’m looking for companies with worldwide reach and innovative products.  For domestically-oriented companies, I’m taking an approach that might be called, for lack of a better term, “value with a catalyst” (regular readers will likely know that I don’t believe traditional value works any more in the US).  This term usually means a value stock where a turnaround has progressed far enough that the path for the firm to return to health can be identified.  E.g., the stock is trading at 20% of book value in an environment where healthy firms are trading at book.  Only “deep” value investors might be interested.  Then the company recruits a CEO who’s a turnaround expert and the stock begins to trade at 30% of book–this is value with a catalyst.  I’m not so interested in book, though.  I’m looking at price/cash flow.

I’m also looking harder in the Pacific Basin.  I’m even thinking about the EU, although that’s an area where market participants have a thorough value orientation and where lots of local market lore is needed to be successful.  So I find it a bit scary–better said, the rewards not worth the effort.

 

 

 

Huawei: troubles getting business in the US

April 10, 2011 By in China, emerging markets, Industry Analysis, Technology, Wireless Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Huawei has become a leading supplier of telecom infrastructure equipment around the globe over the past decade.   Its formula for success?   …providing state-of-the-art products at low prices.  Despite these attractions, Huawei has been unable to make much headway in the US.  Like virtually all mainland companies, it has close connections with the Beijing government and the ruling Communist Party–in Huawei’s case, through the military.  But that relationship has little direct connection with its inability to gain traction here.

The US government opposes Huawei’s attempt to penetrate the US market for two reasons:

–It’s a form of protectionism for domestic industry.  Whoever appears to be the most threatening economic rival of the US at a given time simultaneously becomes the focus for denial of market share or market presence domestically.  It doesn’t hurt at all that this activity plays very well with the voters at home.

In 1987, for example, when Japan was the competitor most feared by Americans, Fujitsu tried to buy a controlling interest in Fairchild Semiconductor.  Although operating on American soil, Fairchild was not an American-owned company.  It was a subsidiary of the French oilfield services giant, Schlumberger.  Nevertheless, Washington opposed the sale on the grounds that foreign ownership of Fairchild was a threat to national security.  Fujitsu withdrew its offer.

In 1989, Mitsubishi Estate wanted to buy 100% of Rockefeller Center for an astronomical price (it subsequently defaulted on the mortgage loan it took out to finance the deal).  This, despite the fact that the Rockefeller Center buildings were old and needed substantial refurbishing.  In addition, the Center’s tenants were about to decamp en masse for lower rents in newer buildings elsewhere midtown Manhattan, as their long-term leases in Rockefeller Center ran out in the following couple of years.  Luckily for Mitsubishi Estate, it was saved from larger disaster by a firestorm of protest that arose in government circles about Japan “buying up America.”  This forced Mitsubishi Estate to cut back the amount it was buying–thereby allowing many Americans to participate in the subsequent financial failure as well.

Today’s economic foe is China, and Washington is dishing out the same treatment.

In 2005, China National Offshore Oil bid for the US integrated oil company, Unocal.  It’s object?  …Unocal’s extensive hydrocarbon holdings in Asia.  Again, a firestorm of protest from Washington, which forced CNOOC to drop its bid.  Unocal was ultimately acquired by Chevron for about a billion dollars less than CNOOC had offered.

Late last year, Huawei appeared to have won a multi-billion dollar portion of an infrastructure contract with Sprint.  But, according to the Wall Street Journal, the then Secretary of Commerce, Gary Locke called the CEO of Sprint.  When Dan Hesse hung up the phone, Huawei was out of the bidding.

A recent Financial Times article analyzing Huawei’s problems closes with a reference to a small rural broadband contract Huawei won from Northeast Wireless in Maine.  The FT says the win came despite a call by the FBI on the Northeast Wireless management, apparently in an attempt to pressure them not to select the Chinese equipment supplier.

So far, this sounds like standard jingoistic fare–politicians wrap themselves in the flag, but act against the country’s long-term economic interests to score points with voters at home and keep domestic corporate contributors to their campaign coffers happy.

–There’s a second reason for government opposition to Huawei that makes its case unique, however.  It’s the issue of cyber warfare.  The worry is that China may secretly embed in Huawei equipment the capability to monitor or disrupt the flow of communications through it.

We already know there have been sophisticated cyber attacks on government and corporate computer systems in the US, emanating from the military in China.  Although it’s a somewhat different issue, the Stuxnet computer worm that has attacked Iranian nuclear installations is generally believed to have been born in US and Israeli government cyberlabs.   So the idea that a government would prevail on a telecom equipment provider in its country to secretly place disruptive or monitoring capability in its products is not that far-fetched.

Although the threat may be framed in military terms–suppose China wants to invade the US?–the much more substantial worry, in my opinion, is corporate espionage through the possible undetected monitoring of corporate communications.

There’s no way to know whether Huawei is doing this now or would ever attempt to do so.  But this uncertainty seems to me to guarantee that the road to success in selling telecom infrastructure in the US for Huawei will continue to be long and hard.