Here’s the right way to handle Huawei
Ottawa can demand more from the Chinese telecom giant
Ottawa has to decide soon if Huawei Technologies Co. will be allowed to continue helping develop Canada’s next-generation, or “5G,” wireless networks.
Huawei, of course, is the Chinese telecom equipment giant at the centre of a crisis in Canada-China relations that began with Canada’s Dec. 1 arrest at the request of the U.S. of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer.
The arrest was part of America’s decade-long effort to contain Huawei’s global ambitions, based on U.S. national-security concerns that the U.S. has not provided evidence to back.
BCE Inc. and Telus Corp. would endure an estimated $1 billion in costs by ripping out the Huawei equipment they’ve been using for a decade.
Huawei is the world’s most advanced 5G player. Its 5G gear runs close to 100 times faster than current technology, and is cheaper than that of rivals Ericsson and Nokia.
Should Canada stick with Huawei, it would gain competitive advantage over the many OECD countries that have banned Huawei, mostly at U.S. urging.
Huawei and its Canadian clients adhere to federal rules that guarantee network security. And Huawei’s Canadian clients use the firm’s equipment only in their radio networks — the antennas and transmitters in cellphone towers — not in their network cores, where sensitive data is located.
Ottawa can demand more of Huawei, including a requirement that it share ownership with Canada of the patents it has accumulated in working with Canadian telcos and the 10 Canadian universities with which Huawei has for many years partnered. That would seem an agreeable alternative to the permanent ban of Huawei for which the U.S. and some security experts are pressuring Ottawa.
The Norway in Britain’s future Now that British lawmakers have rejected the least painful divorce settlement with the European Union (EU) that they could have hoped for, in a lopsided defeat for Prime Minister Theresa May’s government last week, it might seem that only worstcase scenarios lie ahead for Britain. Not so. First, the scheduled March 29 deadline for Britain to quit the EU with or without an advantageous deal is flexible, as the EU has indicated in recent weeks. Brexit negotiations could — and likely will — continue into the summer.
And second, the talk that began last year of a “Norway solution” is gaining momentum. Norway is not an EU member, of course, yet enjoys beneficial trade access to the EU.
In return, Oslo abides by the EU’s bedrock “Four Freedoms.” Those include labour mobility — a welder’s ability to uproot from Budapest for a job in Manchester quickly and with minimal paperwork.
Brexiteers whose Euroscepticism is rooted in xenophobia will reject that. But a majority of Brits will not, rightly understanding it to be a small price to pay for maintaining Britain’s current trade access to the immense EU market.
Meanwhile, Britain would repatriate certain decisionmaking powers from Brussels, the EU’s administrative headquarters.
The “Norway solution” or something approximating it will not be easily achieved.
The most ardent, and politically potent, Brexiteers will fight continued adherence to the EU’s Four Freedoms to the death. And the fight will extend the debilitating uncertainty over Britain’s economic future.
But the hardline Brexiteers will lose that fight. And the most important decision for Britons since the end of the Second World War merits the extra time to negotiate a settlement that works. The New Sears. Same as the Old Sears
This just in from the Dept. of There Ought to Be a Law: Eddie Lampert, New York financier, was the successful bidder last week to buy a bankrupt Sears Holdings Inc. at auction.
Lampert, longtime control- ling shareholder of Sears, was bidding against mute Easter Island statues, since no credible merchant — Walmart, Costco, Amazon — wanted Lampert’s damaged goods.
Having strip-mined Sears with asset sales that made him a billionaire, Lampert has just plucked from the ruins remaining assets he himself spent about two decades devaluing.
Given that Lampert allowed a once formidable Sears Canada to slip into liquidation a year ago this month, he merits attention here only as an exemplar of the perpetual valuedestroying tycoon who strips Main Street investors of their money while fattening up on asset-stripping.
Such one-man wrecking crews destroyed Nortel Networks Corp., Sunbeam Corp. and the pre-bankruptcy General Motors Corp.
Lampert has managed in the 14 years since he merged Kmart Corp. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. only to find new ways of failing to satisfy shoppers.
He has also destroyed about 250,000 jobs at the firm, no small feat.
In the process, Lampert drove a Sears Holdings stock priced at $66.40 (U.S.) just eight years ago, when investors believed his patter about “surfacing” Sears’ real estate value, down to 77 cents (U.S.).
For now, Sears’ remaining 400 U.S. stores and about 50,000 employees remain in the hands of a Lampert whose “retailing skills leave a lot to be desired,” writes Neil Saunders of GlobalData Retail.