Washington's desperate hunting of Huawei

It put Huawei on the Entity List citing national security concerns. But had to allow exemptions and repeated postponement of punitive restrictions so that US companies won't be hurt too badly.

It lobbied allies and partners hard, actually coercively, against adopting Huawei equipment. Yet few appear to have been convinced. It pressed criminal charges against Huawei. And has just added new ones. The legal processes, however, may hardly help its imperative need to bring the 5G deployment plans of countries to a halt.

No wonder Washington is hopping mad.

So mad that it seems to be willing to stake everything it has to throttle what to it is the poster child of a coming Chinese technological threat. State Secretary Mike Pompeo warned at the Munich Security Conference: Huawei is a "Trojan horse for Chinese intelligence", as he has done previously to all the United States' major allies.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi displayed equally, and hitherto unknown, linguistic flare in Munich, admonishing European allies introducing Huawei's 5G technologies would be "like having the state police, the Chinese state police, right in your pocket".

Still, there was no sign their audience in Munich was impressed. The US president himself is reportedly "furious" with London. He has every reason to be, because the US' obedient servant has refused to exclude Huawei outright as he wishes. He won't feel any warmer toward Berlin, for that matter. Angela Merkel's government sticks to a similar stance despite blatant warnings from Washington.

The US ambassador to Germany just confessed the US president called him from Air Force One, instructing him to reiterate to allies that using Huawei will jeopardize intelligence and information sharing "at the highest level".

That same threat was made months ago to Berlin and others. It didn't work then, so why should it now.

If the latest report about the US Commerce Department's proposal to revise the Foreign Direct Product Rule reveals a desperate attempt to escalate efforts to strangle Huawei, others suggesting Washington is considering preventing US firms from selling engines to China for its new passenger plane reveals a broader master plan to suppress Beijing's technological ambitions.

Washington's economic bullying justifies fear of an impending technological Cold War. But negative global impacts aside, what will that bring to US businesses in the first place? If US fear of so-called Chinese technological dominance results in de facto decoupling of the two countries in technological advancement, it will also decouple their markets.

Judging from the US president's personal remarks about the first-phase trade deal the two governments just inked, it was thought that both parties were aware of what is at stake. The latest developments are worrying in that they indicate the opposite.

Huawei and its like may or may not wither on the vine as Washington one-sidedly wishes. But many US businesses will suffer dearly as a result of the dangerous obsession of Washington.