Hard to say if it is protectionism or there are legitimate concerns. Most smartphones and computers manufactured by companies like Apple, Dell, Lenovo have their factories in China. What's the guarantee that those devices are free from hardware hacking? The hardware is so complex nowadays that it is near impossible to detect if you have a chip or a circuit to do something malicious. For more, the Scientific American article on hardware hacking here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-hacker-...