Every American company is at the beck and call of the US government at all times, with their existence in peril if they disobey. The US government has been regulating trade like this since before we were born, and most of the time we don't even notice. This is not the first time that Silicon Valley had to obey US government regulations. Notice that there are hardly any Iranian or North Korean tech companies doing business around the world- any US company that transfers technology to a hostile country gets shut down and people go to jail, and it's not even controversial.

The only thing that's unique with this case is that it's rare for the US government to be so openly hostile toward a major trade partner.

So why does the US government accuse Huawei of being a risk for being at the beck and call of the Chinese government?

The lever here is export control, e.g. "you can't export this tech to these people, countries, vendors" etc, rather than a request to perform some affirmative action at the behest of a government. ( a "writ", if you will; c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act#Application_to_e... )

So the USG can tell a company "you cannot transfer this controlled material to these people, 'cause NatSec", but (probably) can't compel a company "build a tool for us that does X".

Not doing something about national security because the US might look hypocritical is not a concern to those making the decision. Countries spy on each other while complaining about the other spies. The US tried to stop North Korea from getting nukes while holding the world’s largest stockpile of nukes. The US has put multiple countries on blast for human rights violations while also being allies with Saudi Arabia.

The fact that Google and affiliates are being used in a similar manner that we’re accusing Huawei probably makes the people in charge laugh even harder.

The real question should be that if Chinese government policy creates a security risk for the US, why are they only going after Huawei? Why not a blanket ban on all sophisticated Chinese electronics? Lenovo has been caught before putting spyware on computers, but somehow the US government still buys Lenovo laptops...

Huawei can still use Android. They just can't install Google apps on their devices, like Amazon.

Corporations are people too! So yes, I guess they can be consrcipted

Those companies have been actively cooperating with US intelligence since forever. No news here really.

The 'trade war' has been going on for 30 years, we just didn't care that China was doing certain things until it hit home.

It was arguably beneficial to not worry about China's IP issues, foreign ownership, capital controls etc. in the 1990's because a growing China was good for everyone.

Now it's not, so there's a realignment.

There's cynicism here, but both issues are perfectly credible: trade/technology and security.

There are a ton of externalizations that enable China to provide, especially 'services' so cheaply. Those externalizations matter in trade, and probably should be capture in some form of tariff.

i.e. it's not actually 'cheaper' for Sweden to buy stuff from China, if all things otherwise equal the only difference is the manufacturer in China doesn't have to pay for carbon taxes or something like that. It's just moving deck chairs around.

More like governments are at "war" and all the big corporations caught in the middle of trade are the "weapons".