Michael Diaz, Global Managing Partner of Miami-based Diaz Reus, warns that the West’s approach in respect of China will have consequential effects for both sides. ‘China will be limited in getting what they need in terms of technology to scale-up, and then the UK, Europe, and the US will have to start creating their own foundries for chip makers and semiconductors and will have to start to decouple from China’, he explains. ‘But that decoupling comes at a huge expense in terms of billions and billions of dollars of lost revenue and sales for all companies involved in these trade and sanction wars.’
Diaz, whose firm has experienced an ‘exponential’ uptick in sanctions work in recent years, including in regard to measures implemented by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, adds that countries that face sanctions – such as Cuba, Iran and North Korea – have typically established their own shadow and parallel economies to counter such moves. ‘In the end, folks will adjust, just like water finds a way to run through stone’, says Diaz.
