According to a report by Bloomberg on June 13, Kurt Sievers, president of NXP Semiconductors, said in an interview that the trade war between China and the United States is indeed beneficial to the company to attract customers in the short term, but in the long run, the trade war is damaging the entire technology industry.
“From the perspective of Chinese customers, it’s good for us not to be a US company,” Sievers said. “This clearly opens the door and makes things easier. From a macro perspective, trade conflicts obviously do not contribute to technological development. I believe that trade wars have slowed the pace of world innovation in many ways.” He compared these favorable factors with the negative effects of trade conflicts on technological development.
In October 2016, Qualcomm announced that it would acquire NXP Semiconductors for approximately $38 billion. If the acquisition was completed, it would be the largest acquisition in the history of chips. The merger was approved by the United States, the European Union, Japan, South Korea and Russia at the time, but the Chinese Ministry of Commerce rejected the merger last year. It is widely believed that this was related to the trade war at the time.
