The View | Expect the unexpected? ZTE and Starbucks’ experiences offer sobering lessons for business owners

Things had been pretty peachy over at Shenzhen-based ZTE, the world’s fourth-largest telecommunications equipment supplier. Then, suddenly, the company learned that a ban was to be imposed on US companies providing it with supplies, and possibly intellectual property, a crippling and abrupt blow to ZTE’s supply chain. 

It is quite possible that ZTE’s management had braced themselves to become an incidental casualty of the burgeoning US-China trade war, most likely foreseeing that it would affect the export of its products to America. What was not expected was the reverse, in which American imports would be cut off. 

As it turned out, the threat to its exports came from another quarter, when Britain’s cyber watchdog announced that it was blacklisting ZTE as a supplier on national security grounds.