Michael Dell denounces trade war between US and China

Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, expressed his dissatisfaction with the US trade war with China at VMworld in San Francisco. Dell calls the conflict unproductive.

The Register reports that Michael Dell made the comment during a Q&A session with journalists at VMworld. He went on to say that Dell “has had to make some adjustments due to trade tariffs”. The first priority for Dell is to maintain a constant supply of products. This was the answer to a question from a Chinese journalist. The latter asked if Dell could still deliver to customers in China, with the American trade tariffs.

Among other things, there are additional tariffs on imported Chinese components and there is an imminent ban on Huawei importing and using American technology. This has already been postponed for ninety days. Dell probably also expressed his dissatisfaction because Huawei is considering using other technologies for its products, instead of, for example, the Armv8 architecture, which is used by many American manufacturers. Huawei alluded to the use of open source RISC-V technology instead of Arm technology.

Communication with the U.S. government

Michael Dell made it clear that this unrest does not benefit the business of the tech giant. He did, however, mention that the company can deal with the obstacles flexibly. “Our first priority is the continuity of product supply, and fortunately we were able to do that,” said the CEO. “We have a substantial business in China, and outside China, which depends on a global supply chain. We have a lot of flexibility to allow our company to flourish outside China and within China.”

Dell also said that the biggest IT players are busy communicating with the White House to end the trade war with China as soon as possible: “We will continue to talk to government officials to continue working together for a successful solution. We don’t find these tensions productive for our company.”