Allies have little enthusiasm for escalated chip war

Former commerce secretary Gina Raimondo once called the United States' attempts to prevent China from accessing US-sourced advanced semiconductors and related manufacturing equipment a "fool's errand". Her remark, made not long before she left office, showed she saw clearly that it was a Sisyphean task.

That explains why, despite the huge amounts of work the previous administration did in that regard until even the last week of it being in office, its chip war has basically failed to check China's development in the field, and almost all parties involved, which are under US coercion, oppose the US' campaign.

Yet the Trump administration is seeking to persist with that endeavor as it is reportedly drawing up even tougher versions of the US' semiconductor curbs and pressuring key allies to escalate their restrictions on China's chip industry in a bid to limit China's technological prowess.

Administration officials recently met with their Japanese and Dutch counterparts to discuss restricting Tokyo Electron and ASML engineers from maintaining semiconductor equipment in China.

But the question is whether the US' allies are still willing to follow the US' instructions, since their "cooperation" with the former US administration, which attached strategic significance to strengthening the alliance against China and Russia, could only be called halfhearted. The US can't compensate foreign companies for their economic losses if they give up the Chinese market as required. Not to mention the harm they would suffer as a result of China's foreseeable retaliatory measures.

If the Trump administration cannot resolve the practical concerns of the US allies, it will be more difficult for it to win their continuing cooperation in the chip war against China under the flag of "value diplomacy". The administration's about-face in foreign and trade policies has left almost all its allies and partners high and dry on the Ukraine crisis and on their economic relations with the US, shattering the "values" that they thought the US shared with them.

That the Dutch foreign trade ministry and Japanese ministry of economy, trade and industry declined to comment when asked about the latest contact with the Trump teams, a sharp contrast with their we-are-in responses to the former US administration's cajoling, is a further evidence of their shared hesitation.

The Trump administration should bear in mind many US allies and partners started repairing ties with China the moment Trump was elected president in November. And the shock waves the administration has caused in the past month or so since it took office have proved the foresight of the adjustment of their China policy.

The Trump administration should value the common understanding it reached with Beijing that the start of its tenure should represent a new beginning for the relationship between the two countries. If it continues to pour old wine into a new bottle, hollowing out the potential of bilateral cooperation and engagement, any mutual trust between the two sides will soon dissipate, pushing the relationship back into the previous lose-lose model.

As the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded via a spokesperson on the US' latest move to escalate its chip war against China, politicizing and weaponizing economic, trade and technological issues only hinder the development of the global semiconductor industry and will ultimately harm the US as well as others.