win a bilateral trade war against China. I do not know what data and information that the IMF has to support its assessment.
IC is China's Archilles' heel. The U.S. and the UK attacked China's weakness at such an early stage when the trade war has not yet been launched, I doubt the U.S. wants a war or not.
On a separate note, the U.S. demanded BNP Paribas, a French bank, to pay $9B penalty as a result of BNP circumventing sanctions to help money laundering. I once heard that BNP made much smaller of the profits by taking the compliance risks.
The Obama administration demanded JP Morgan to pay a hefty penalty because they hired Chinese red princes to get deals in China. The penalty also exceeded the total revenue generated by the deals in question.
Provided these two precedents, ZTE shouldn't complain.
1): The U.S. is not stupid. The U.S. knows what you are doing. Steve Bannon knows very well how Chinese elderlies abuse the U.S. social welfare.
2): The U.S. always revenges when the time comes.
However, it is not necessarily bad for China.
