Comment by tipsysquid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tipsysquid | Hacker News Reader

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I believe it was this Marketplace podcast episode[0] that talks about the UK and their relationship with Huawei. If I can recall, the UK is tied tightly to Huawei across several industries, one including nuclear reactor/plant development that has been in on going for ages and involves packages of training lots of UK workers.

The podcast goes on to say that the UK is in a tough position because to break ties with any part of Huawei could have a chain reaction of cancellations/retaliations that could be extremely costly to UK in a time of uncertainty with Brexit and now covid-19. "Damned if they do, damned if they don't" was the general sentiment.

[0] https://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace/what-weighs-do...

UK is a unique situation as well as because of Brexit.

It's looking certain that they are going to crash out of the EU single market without an agreement and without replacement trade agreements in place with other countries.

Now recently China punished Australia by cutting trade as a result of Australia pushing for the COVID-19 investigation. Which given how sensitive they about Huawei and their need to teach the world a lesson gives an indication of how severe their response is likely to be.

UK can hardly afford to impact trading relationships with their number 2, 3, 4 and 5 partners all at the same time as they are dealing with a pretty incompetent COVID-19 response.

A lot of competitive practices in business are considered fair game, even when outside the scope of offering a better product or service. Leaning on lobbying, or, relying on tariffs, for example. The line that must not be crossed is when one side of the business is actually a government entity and in particular, of a foreign government, and the other is e genuine private business.

In those cases, incentives are too far out of alignment for a deal that is good for both sides to be had.

If HN keeps recommending all these amazing podcasts that I've never heard of, I'm not going to have enough time in day to get through them... Thanks for the recommendation!

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