While I agree that you could find firms that have not stolen IP to make their product, trying to nail down the sanctions to individual businesses would never work. The number of entities you would need to track and audit is enormous and it's way too easy for someone to launder the information around to supposedly "good" businesses.

You're talking about the entire supply chain, so you would end up punishing firms that are otherwise innocent because unbeknownst to them they bought resisters or capacitors or silicon plates from a bad actor.

A smart approach is just not feasible at this scale.

"so you would end up punishing firms that are otherwise innocent"

That's exactly what the current tariffs do. So I guess if it's too much work to vet individual firms, we just lazily start a trade war? Again, for this administration, sounds about right.

Yes. You can either punish innocent firms, or punish innocent firms plus lots of extra paperwork.

Sure, but I don't think that's a practical solution. Also, tariffs like this aren't intended to harm individual businesses; the intent is to pressure the Chinese government, a government which directly supports and plays a role in IP theft and market manipulation. Why would the US spend an insane amount of resources to lessen the effect when the effect is exactly what they're after?

When two elephants fight, many ants die. There is no precision guided ammo in trade wars. Its brute force!