Trump’s China Deal Creates Collateral Damage for Tech Firms

Micron secured some gains from the China deal but it may end up suffering bigger losses from the broader U.S.-China battle.
Among the corporate titans recognized last week by President Trump during a White House signing ceremony for his China trade deal was Sanjay Mehrotra, the chief executive of Micron Technology, whose Idaho semiconductor company is at the heart of Mr. Trump’s trade war.

Micron, which makes memory chips for computers and smartphones, is precisely the kind of advanced technology company that the Trump administration views as crucial to maintaining a competitive edge over China. After Micron rebuffed a 2015 takeover attempt by a Chinese state-owned company, it watched with disbelief as its innovations were stolen and copied by a Chinese competitor and its business was blocked from China.

China’s treatment of American companies like Micron fed Mr. Trump’s decision to unleash a punishing trade war with the world’s second-largest economy, a fight he said would halt Beijing’s use of unfair practices to undermine the United States. But that two-year conflagration may wind up being more damaging to American technology companies.

The initial trade deal announced last week should make operating in China easier for companies like Micron. The deal contains provisions meant to protect American technology and trade secrets and allow companies to challenge China on accusations of theft, including older cases like Micron’s that precede the agreement.
But Mr. Trump’s aggressive trade approach has also accelerated a technology arms race between the two countries, putting American companies like Micron at risk as the two nations try to decouple their economies. In an effort to reduce its reliance on American components, China has expedited efforts to produce its own semiconductors, driverless cars, artificial intelligence and other technologies. Those efforts, along with the Trump administration’s desire to restrict the sales of American tech products to China, could hurt the very companies Mr. Trump set out to protect.

“Let’s be clear, the trade war has been very bad for the semiconductor industry in several ways,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank funded by the tech industry. “It’s like China woke up and said, ‘We’ve relied too much on the United States.’”
The trade deal does nothing to curtail China’s use of subsidies, industrial plans and state-owned companies, which have helped it build formidable industries in steel, wind turbines and solar panels. Those state-directed efforts, which put many American manufacturers out of business, are now being harnessed for high-tech industries.

The Trump administration is constructing its own walls around American technology, reducing access to the lucrative Chinese market out of security concerns. It is restricting exports of sensitive technologies, barring sales to certain Chinese companies and blocking Chinese entities from investing in the United States.

The administration is considering further restricting sales to Huawei, the Chinese telecom company that relies on components from Micron and other American suppliers. And the China trade deal leaves tariffs on more than $360 billion in Chinese goods in place as Mr. Trump tries to push American companies to bring manufacturing back home