No, because European companies did not have a mandate by their national governments to steal American intellectual property and did not force technology transfers. There is no reason to ban European products or companies that acted ethically. Why this silly question?
Example of US Tech doing business in China
- Thread starter ironchef
- Start date
Are you asking 18th century US would have banned European products and companies?
Why would they? Americans were emerging country at that time and they were doing all sort of clever ways to get ahead from developed nation of UK, just like China today. If British textile company had setup their plant here, they didn't have to go-to great lengths to steal UK technology. Textile at that time accounted for 50% of UK trading revenue. Compare and contrast that to 5G revenues of today, which is the main issue currently.
Americans also set up patent system skewing in their favor. Any one with stolen technology could have registered their patents in 1790, but after 1793 they restricted only to US citizens.
No love lost for UK tho'. They plundered their colonies, especially their prized jewel India. Most of the inputs for their textiles came from plundered resources of india and middle east and they fed them their cheap manufactured finished goods. US probably wanted to avoid their fate.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/06/we-were-pirates-too/
"
But the Americans had no respect for British intellectual property protections. They had fought for independence to escape the mother country’s suffocating economic restrictions. In their eyes, British technology barriers were a pseudo-colonial ploy to force the United States to serve as a ready source of raw materials and as a captive market for low-end manufactures. While the first U.S. patent act, in 1790, specified that "any person or persons" could file a patent, it was changed in 1793 to make clear that only U.S. citizens could claim U.S. patent protection."
Last edited:
Because that is the basic difference between China today and US back then, even though both "steal technology".
By the way, Europe "stole" printing press and gun powder technology from China.
No matter how you try to protect your IP, eventually the world will catch on. So, the best US strategy? Keep innovating and run as fast as we can to stay ahead of the curve.
Well, gunpowder is a chemical mixture. That is not a stolen technology. And wasn't it Gutenberg who invented the printing press? He was not Chinese, best I recall of my history lessons.
Chip manufacturing is also a chemical process, just like gunpowder.
https://www.livescience.com/43639-who-invented-the-printing-press.html
Virtually every company will take that trade: cheaper costs now, access to a growing market of a billion+ people vs the future risk of IP loss.
The thing is that we all underestimated the Chinese government’s ability to maintain a command economy.
Plus a lot of businesses overestimated Chinese buying power. 99% of Chinese are cheap Charlies and unless you manufacture trash products worth pennies, the population with sufficient buying power is abysmal. Exceptions to this thought are probgably highly popular products such as mobile phones, products that society pressures people to own and suggests that it's brand and price reflects someone's status.
The population with sufficient buying power is abysmal?
99% cheap Charlie, but 1%=1.5 million. Ask Rolex, Patek Philippe, LV, MBZ... which country is their biggest market and growing rapidly? Not the US.
Of course it's growing rapidly from a base of zero. And as I stated yes there are products that sell not an intrinsic value but status and Chinese love status. My point here is that it is not worth it for a high quality but mass product to pay the China entry price in exchange for a relatively disappointing customer base. Take the German knife maker Zwilling for example. Not the most expensive individual hand made products but a high quality mass product that is accordingly priced. The affluent class in China that can afford such and similar products is in light of the entire Chinese market very small and remains small. Sure it adds to the bottom line when you sold nothing there 10 years ago but now sell a few millions. But it's a far cry from the promised customer paradise. You need to add all the risks and cost on the other hand and weight the benefits against the costs. Regional company heads disappear any day or night, the stock may be locked up by a regulator without notice for months, operations can be shut down at the snip of a finger. Licenses withdrawn. And all sorts of shenanigans. All that to add perhaps 5 or 10% to the global bottom line? That, I believe, is what gobal CEOs are currently thinking about