As the trade paparazzi speculate about whether and when Trump will impose trade sanctions on China and what those sanctions will be, a trade war is already widening right under their noses. For more than a decade, the United States and China have been quietly waging a trade war in the shadows of public policy.

China’s pursuit of technological know-how has included objectionable tactics, such as the implementation of discriminatory innovation policies, intellectual property theft, forced technology transfer, and cyber-espionage. The U.S. government’s response has included the informal decision to put the U.S. market off limits to China’s most successful technology companies and to make U.S. technology more difficult for Chinese companies to acquire. What that means is that globally successful information and communication technology (ICT) companies, such as Huawei Technologies, have been informally blacklisted from selling network gear to America’s telecommunications companies, and selling computers, smartphones, and other electronic devices to U.S. consumers. 

It also means that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), through imminent legislative and regulatory changes, will soon complete its metamorphosis from a body that reviews proposed foreign acquisitions and helps the parties mitigate potential security risks associated with those deals into an insurmountable obstacle to any significant acquisitions of U.S. technology by Chinese companies.

I wrote about this metastasizing trade war and its adverse repercussions in Forbes the other day, but wanted to provide an update on the rapidly changing landscape.

On January 9, Rep. Mike Conaway (R, TX, 11^th) introduced legislation that not only forbids U.S. government agencies from purchasing ICT equipment produced by Huawei, ZTE (another Chinese ICT company), or their subsidiaries and affiliates, but also forbids those agencies from doing business with any entity that uses equipment produced by those companies.

Should HR 4747, the “Defending U.S. Government Communications Act,” become law, it’s difficult to imagine that Beijing would remain welcoming of U.S. technology companies and products in China for much longer.

In my estimation, this is going to be the most explosive trade issue of 2018 and beyond.