Beyond sanctions: lessons on tech supply chains
Source: Unsplash
The global economy is being reshaped by a confluence of crises, with security increasingly taking precedence over openness as states seek greater sovereignty in critical technologies, investment and raw materials. Against this backdrop, the volume Fragmentation, Securitisation and Interdependencies in the Global Economy has just been published by the British Academy and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Our contribution, explores this dynamic through the case of Huawei and US efforts to restrict its access to advanced technologies.
In The realignment of tech supply chains: lessons from US trade sanctions against Huawei, Elisa Oreglia, Thais Lobo and James Burroughs show that, despite US government has deployed tariffs, export controls, investment restrictions and strategic sanctions aimed at limiting Huawei’s access to US technologies and curbing its international expansion, the Chinese company has adapted rather than simply disappeared. Using Huawei smartphones as an entry point, the report traces a combination of short-term responses — including downgrading, stockpiling and circumventing restrictions — and longer-term strategies centred on supply chain diversification and innovation.
Finally, the work proposes three analytical lenses for evaluating sanctions’ impacts: clarifying goals and time frames; mapping the resources available to absorb the sanctions at different levels; and analysing component-level vulnerabilities, commodification, and modularity. Rather than achieving decoupling, the US measures have triggered supply chain realignment whose effects will only emerge over the long term.
Read the full report: Oreglia, E., Lobo, T. and Burroughs, J. (2026). The realignment of tech supply chains: lessons from US trade sanctions against Huawei, in Fragmentation, Securitisation and Interdependencies in the Global Economy. London: The British Academy, pp. 4–20. Available at: https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/6275/Fragmentation_Securitisation_and_Interdependencies_in_the_Global_Economy.pdf