Comment Re:Of course they are (Score 2, Interesting) 270
Yes, interestingly the US customers are also backing away from Chinese products for the same reasons the Chinese are backing away from American products. So who is hurt again? All you have to do to see who this hurts and who it benefits is to look at the trade balance. Since Americans buy more Chinese stuff than Chinese buy American stuff, it seems to me the obvious answer is that it will help the US "tech economy."
Also, most of the American exports are not commodity items that can be replaced, but factory machines and related equipment where there isn't strong competition. That is equipment they simply must buy in order to be competitive on export quality. So even in a trade war setting, US exports would only go down a little bit, and most of the "US brands" banned are actually manufactured in Asia. So they'd be cutting at their own face. Meanwhile, tech companies with US manufacturing like Texas Instruments would benefit substantially from any such conflict because trade wars drive production to return home.
I certainly agree there is likely to be a net negative for existing US brands, but most of that loss would be to local competition that is willing to manufacture here. The same American companies that are nervous about Chinese spying and backdoors are usually less worried about NSA spying, because the assumption is that the NSA acts to benefit US industry.