One of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, Poland, has announced it will no longer supply weapons to the country as a diplomatic dispute over grain escalates.
The nation’s prime minister said it would instead focus on arming itself with more modern weapons.
The move comes as tensions between the two nations rise.
On Tuesday, Poland summoned Ukraine’s ambassador over comments made by President Volodymyr Zelensky at the UN.
He said some nations had feigned solidarity with Ukraine, which Warsaw denounced as “unjustified concerning Poland, which has supported Ukraine since the first days of the war”.
Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, announced the decision to no longer supply Ukraine with weapons in a televised address on Wednesday after a day of rapidly escalating tensions between the two countries over grain imports.
The grain dispute began after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine all but closed the main Black Sea shipping lanes and forced Ukraine to find alternative overland routes.
That in turn led to large quantities of grain ending up in central Europe.
Consequently, the European Union temporarily banned imports of grain into five countries; Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia to protect local farmers, who feared Ukrainian grain was driving down the prices locally.
The ban ended on 15 September and the EU chose not to renew it, but Hungary, Slovakia and Poland decided to keep on implementing it.
The European Commission has repeatedly stated that it is not up to individual EU members to make trade policy for the bloc.
Earlier this week, Ukraine filed lawsuits to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) against those countries over the bans, which it said were a violation of international obligations.
Ukraine’s Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said that “it is crucially important for us to prove that individual member states cannot ban imports of Ukrainian goods”.
But Poland said they would keep the ban in place, and a “complaint before the WTO doesn’t impress us”.
Beijing’s widening curbs on iPhone use by government staff raised concerns among U.S. lawmakers on Thursday and fanned fears that American tech companies heavily exposed to China could take a hit from rising tensions between the countries.
A customer talks to sales assistants in an Apple store as Apple Inc’s new iPhone 14 models go on sale in Beijing, China, September 16, 2022. REUTERS/Thomas Peter/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights
Apple (AAPL.O) closed down 2.9% on Thursday and suffered its worst two-day percentage decline since November — after news that Beijing has told employees at some central government agencies in recent weeks to stop using their Apple phones at work.
Several Wall Street analysts said the curbs show that even a company with a good relationship with the Chinese government and a large presence in the world’s second-biggest economy was not immune to rising tensions between the two nations.
Sino-U.S. friction has worsened in recent years as Washington tries to restrict China’s access to key technologies including cutting-edge chip technology, and Beijing looks to reduce its reliance on American tech.
China’s Huawei last week launched its new Mate 60 Pro smartphone, which is powered by an advanced chip made by Chinese contract chipmaker SMIC (0981.HK) and marks an apparent breakthrough for the duo hit by U.S. sanctions.
The U.S. Commerce Department said late Thursday it’s working to obtain more information “on the character and composition” of the chip that may violate trade restrictions.
“The restrictions in place since 2019 have knocked Huawei down and forced it to reinvent itself — at a substantial cost to the (Chinese) government,” the department added. “We are continually working to assess and, when appropriate, update our controls based on the dynamic threat environment and we will not hesitate to take appropriate action to protect U.S. national security.”
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters on Air Force One the U.S. government is trying to get more information about the Huawei chip.
“There’s a number of different methods to try to sort of come to an understanding of what exactly it is that we’re dealing with here,” Sullivan said. “I can’t give you an exact number of days but this is not going to be months down the road. We’re going to want to look at this carefully, consult with our partners, get a clearer sense of what we’re looking at, and then we’ll make decisions accordingly.”
The U.S. sanctions cut Huawei’s access to chipmaking tools essential for producing the most advanced handset models, hammering the company’s business and allowing Apple to take some market share from the national favorite in China.
“If Huawei has the capability to supply and scale its home-grown Kirin 9000S (chips), we see the Mate series phone as an opportunity for Huawei to increase its shipments and regain its market share,” analysts at BofA Global Research said.
Apple supplier Qualcomm (QCOM.O), one of the U.S. companies with the largest China presence, tumbled 7.2% to lead losses among major tech firms.
Lawmakers of both major U.S. parties have been vocal in their concerns about national security risks allegedly created by China’s products, pressuring the Biden administration to get even more aggressive with Beijing.
The wider ban is not surprising and shows how China is trying to limit a Western company’s market access to the nation, said U.S. Representative Mike Gallagher, the chairman of the House panel on China.
“This is textbook Chinese Communist Party behavior – promote PRC (People’s Republic of China) national champions in telecommunications, and slowly squeeze Western companies’ market access,” Gallagher, a Republican, told Reuters.
U.S. Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat and chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also shared similar concerns and said, “as the Chinese economy stalls, we can potentially anticipate more aggressive moves against foreign businesses”.
China has curbed shipments from prominent U.S. firms including planemaker Boeing (BA.N) and memory chipmaker Micron (MU.O).
Other suppliers of the iPhone maker including Broadcom (AVGO.O), Skyworks Solutions (SWKS.O) and Texas Instruments (TXN.O) were also lower, falling between 1.8% and 7.4%. The drop in the technology sector weighed on the three main U.S. stock indexes, particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which closed down 0.9%.
In Asia, shares of several Apple suppliers fell on Monday, with TSMC and Tokyo Electron (8035.T) falling 0.7% and 4% respectively.
“This announcement seems to have just refocused investors that the relationship between the U.S. and China is a big risk to current equity prices, particularly in technology,” said Rick Meckler, partner at Cherry Lane Investments.
