Many people view the internet as an international landscape where every user is treated equally, as enshrined in net neutrality. However, we have learned that this is not the case. Within a year of Trump taking office, net neutrality was gutted in the US, opening the door for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to charge extra for access to certain content or throttling the speeds other content is delivered. Geography also plays a role, as people are forced to use proxies to change their IP addresses. Yes, there are easy and quick ways to do that.
As Trump’s “good and easy to win” trade war approaches its second year of not being won, the impacts spread out across the American economy. The effects of Trump’s trade war also spread beyond the USA, especially regarding the tech industry’s impact. More broadly, the internet and the tech industry are starting to feel the pinch in several unexpected ways.
Vietnam
One of the few beneficiaries of Trump’s trade war has been Vietnam. The nation has been undergoing an economic boom recently, driven partly by the realization that the Vietnamese economy is more significant than the government thought it was. However, the trade war between the US and China has made Vietnam a suddenly very attractive supplier for several industries, especially the tech industry.
Multinational corporations that want to avoid the tariffs that the US has imposed on Chinese imports are increasingly turning to Vietnam. Many tech products can be manufactured easily in Vietnam with a minor price difference. Once the added costs of the tariffs are factored in, even the more expensive production options in Vietnam start to make more economic sense.
GoerTek, the Chinese manufacturer of Apple’s AirPods, has already announced that they plan to move their production to Vietnam and will invest $260 million in the venture. Similarly, Google has announced that it will be moving the production of its Pixel smartphones out of China and into Vietnam. Other businesses have been avoiding the tariffs by simply having goods made in China and shipped to Vietnam to be relabelled and shipped to the US as if they were originally from Vietnam.
GitHub
A particularly striking example of how the trade war has affected the tech sector can be seen with GitHub. On 25th July 2019, reports began coming from around the internet that GitHub users in some countries found their accounts locked without prior warning. Many developers, including some prominent members of the GitHub community, took to social media in an understandable panic, having been unceremoniously booted out of their accounts.
GitHub’s terms of service contain all the usual boilerplate clauses that we have expected, including one forbidding any users from countries subject to US sanctions from using the service. As is always the case with these ToS, GitHub places the onus for adhering to them on the user. While GitHub is within its rights, and perhaps even under legal obligation, to remove access to accounts covered by US sanctions, they went about it caused a lot of understandable anger.
GitHub’s heavy-handed approach won it no support from its user base, especially after reports of users being banned despite having no affiliation with the affected countries. But perhaps the most annoying part of the whole debacle for the affected users was that the other Git hosting platforms – GitLabs in particular – had taken a much more reasonable approach, some would say obvious.
While GitLab was moving its infrastructure away from Microsoft Azure and over to Google Cloud, Google informed them that they would need to observe their legal obligations. GitLab responded not by instantly banning users but by telling the community of the situation and providing time and guidance to help them get everything moved over.
The GitHub incident was reminiscent of a similar incident involving the productivity app Slack the previous year. Slack also banned many users without warning them, provoking the expected backlash from the community.
Other Impacts on the Tech Sector
Another prominent casualty of Trump’s trade war has been Huawei. Huawei has always been controversial in the West because of its close ties to the Chinese state. There are fears that the telecoms giant could be compelled to assist the Chinese government in espionage activities. Naturally, China and Huawei had always denied these claims whether national security was a consideration when Trump decided to ban the business from national infrastructure.
Since being added to the US Entity List, Huawei has been subjected to specific license requirements. This restricts the ability of US businesses to do business with Huawei without first obtaining proper authorization. This has led to Google suspending Huawei’s Android license. The smartphone maker will now have to either develop their operating system or use the open-source version of Android that doesn’t feature any of Google’s services.
In the aftermath of the Huawei news, the business had anticipated something similar for a while and had spent at least a year stockpiling critical US-made components they might need for their smartphones.
Trade wars have a far-reaching impact. It often takes time for the full effects to manifest themselves. The impact of Trump’s trade war is being felt worldwide, disrupting the internet and the tech industry more broadly globally.
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About the Author
Rebecca James is an IT consultant with forward thinking approach toward developing IT infrastructures of SMEs. She writes to engage with individuals and raise awareness of digital security, privacy, and better IT infrastructure.
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