The overall strategery here is brilliant. After two years of rope-a-dope…. Trump exits the corner for the championship rounds in the trade fight: First the body blow, China boxed-in with trade confrontation and consequences of retreat from agreement (Mnuchin and Lighthizer);… Then whammo, the roundhouse XO placing telecom under national security review (Navarro and Pillsbury); then upper-cut, Wilburine places Hauwei and affiliates on Commerce Dept. trade blacklist… Lions and Killers and Strategists, oh my.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – The U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday it is adding Huawei Technologies Co Ltd and 70 affiliates to its so-called “Entity List” – a move that bans the telecom giant from buying parts and components from U.S. companies without U.S. government approval. U.S. officials told Reuters the decision would also make it difficult if not impossible for Huawei, the largest telecommunications equipment producer in the world, to sell some products because of its reliance on U.S. suppliers. Under the order that will take effect in the coming days, Huawei will need a U.S. government license to buy American technology. Huawei did not immediately comment.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement President Donald Trump backed the decision that will “prevent American technology from being used by foreign owned entities in ways that potentially undermine U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.” The dramatic move comes as the Trump administration has aggressively lobbied other countries not to use Huawei equipment in next-generation 5G networks and comes just days after the Trump administration imposed new tariffs on Chinese goods amid an escalating trade war. (read more)

There is simply no-way these step-by-step actions were not done without a massive amount of long-term planning and forethought. Planning that had to be happening well before President Trump’s November 2017 ‘golden ticket‘ tour of Asia. Well before….

(Reuters) […] Washington has also turned up the heat on other fronts, from targeting China’s tech firms such as Huawei and ZTE to sending warships through the strategic Taiwan Strait. As the pressure mounts, Chinese leaders are pressing ahead to seal a deal and avoid a drawn-out trade war that risks stalling China’s long-term economic development, according to people familiar with their thinking. But Beijing is mindful of a possible nationalistic backlash if it is seen as conceding too much to Washington. Agreeing to U.S. demands to end subsidies and tax breaks for state-owned firms and strategic sectors would also overturn China’s state-led economic model and weaken the Communist Party’s grip on the economy, they said. Trade analysts say China could reward other global companies at the expense of U.S. firms, replacing for example Boeing planes with Airbus jets where possible. But there is considerable risk for China in transitioning its retaliation from tariffs to non-tariffs barriers on U.S. companies because doing so would intensify perceptions of an uneven playing field in China and incentivise some firms to shift sourcing or investment outside the country, they say. Trump has called for U.S. firms to move production back to the United States. “The medium- to long-term ramifications on supply chains are being deeply underestimated. I would be severely concerned if I was China,” Robert Lawrence, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, recently told journalists in Beijing, where a group from the think-tank met with senior Chinese officials. (more)