Thursday, June 13th 2024
US Government Sanctions Deepcool Over Supplying to Blacklisted Russian Firms
The US Department of the Treasury on Wednesday, sanctioned 16 Chinese tech companies involved in supporting the Russian wartime economy, or supplying goods to blacklisted Russian firms, as the war in Ukraine rages on. A surprising name on this list is Beijing Deepcool Industries, the company behind the popular PC cooling, casing, and power supply brand Deepcool. A US State Department release announcing the sanctions, described Deepcool as supplying $1 million worth common high-priority items list (CHPL) goods. These are items that could directly or indirectly support the Russian war-effort in Ukraine. "BEIJING DEEPCOOL INDUSTRIES CO LTD is a PRC-based company involved in the supply of over $1 million worth of CHPL items to Russian companies, including the U.S.-designated, Russia-based AKTSIONERNOE OBSHCHESTVO TASKOM and OOO NOVYI AI TI PROEKT," the State Department release says.
Meanwhile, the executive aspect of the sanctions are handled by the Treasury Department, which restricts all transactions by US firms to the 16 newly sanctioned Chinese companies, which include Deepcool. What this means is that the US-end of Deepcool must immediately cease operations, as it cannot transact any business with its parent company in China. Sale of Deepcool product will also stop, as US residents cannot conduct any business with the company. This could also mean that the US-based subsidiary of Deepcool may not be in a position to provide aftersales support to existing customers in the country.
Sources:
US State Department (Government website), US Treasury Department (Government website)
Meanwhile, the executive aspect of the sanctions are handled by the Treasury Department, which restricts all transactions by US firms to the 16 newly sanctioned Chinese companies, which include Deepcool. What this means is that the US-end of Deepcool must immediately cease operations, as it cannot transact any business with its parent company in China. Sale of Deepcool product will also stop, as US residents cannot conduct any business with the company. This could also mean that the US-based subsidiary of Deepcool may not be in a position to provide aftersales support to existing customers in the country.
55 Comments on US Government Sanctions Deepcool Over Supplying to Blacklisted Russian Firms
This, by the way, is going to do as much to stop the war as all the previous sanctions- nothing. But it will be remembered quite vividly by the Russian populace as it hits them far worse than the intended targets. This current BS shall pass, the government will inevitably change, but such shortsighted moves will pretty much guarantee negative consequences for foreign relations going forward.
tl:dr USA, Russia, China - all of their governments are absolute morons and the world honestly would have been better off without “superpowers”.
Okay, this is actually even stupider than I thought. I ran the companies and looked things up via contacts of mine and… Well, Таском (TASKOM) is a fairly small logistics company from Kaluga, of all places. I guess the idea here is that maybe the military uses their warehouses? And Новый IT (NOVIY AI TI) is… literally just a small PC part distributor. Really. Not even a significant one, not a government backed one, they just trade PC parts via several marketplaces. That’s it.
So now because of this DEEPCOOL has to exit the US market? Have I mentioned already that this is a farce?
But I have no interest of going full political discourse here, won’t really be productive since I would guess that the vast majority of TPUs worldwide audience has a rather odd view on what’s going on internally in Russia these days and what the Russian public actually is like. As such, any discussion of this nature will boil down to stereotypes, headlines ripped from the media and hilarious anecdotal examples.
Few companies are under investigation in Poland for suspected increased trading with Kazachstan which suggests that the Kazach companies are used as proxies for getting the goods into Russia and Belarus. Granted, none of them are tech related but still, bypassing sanctions is bypassing sanctions. Another method is to get cargo into Belarus with destination of Kazachstan but then the cargo is offloaded in Minsk or St Petersburg and loaded into different trucks and our customs agencies loose track of it.
Just because two listed companies are "small" doesn't mean they have small profits generated from importing sanctioned goods. That's how proxies work, you put some no name company as a middle man and it won't show until you see that the small middleman is suddenly making millions from importing.
You don't sell to terrorists.
Either the press coverage from 194 nations on earth is a carefully-coordinated, perfectly synchronised propaganda/conspiracy, or Putin really is an international war criminal.
How long do retailers have to remove deepcool stuff?
WMDweapons to them?We're at a stage when governments sanction trades with gaming gear, such as liquid cooling, and regular citizens jump at each other's throats over how much they hate, or how much others should hate an entire nation. It kind of feels like the world has been in this exact state before, and it's really sad. :(
Though the chinese companies have no interest in stopping selling to Russia, they could just do it through black market instead.
The war isn't between who's "right or wrong" although there's fair arguments on both sides, it's about who gets the bigger piece of the pie & arguably the bakery too.
And yes, sanctioned regimes will use any and every avenue they can to get around sanctions - it's a game of whack-a-mole for the sanctioning party. The more moles (companies) the sanctionee has, the better their chance of getting past the sanctions.
I should point out that PC parts and specifically coolers are not on the control list: www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/all-articles/13-policy-guidance/country-guidance/2172-russia-export-controls-list-of-common-high-priority-items
You can see that list is very specifically curated, it's not something I look and think it ridiculous. If DeepCool sold goods to China on that list, it deserves to be sanctioned.This is really whitewashing the degree and goal to which each is doing so. It's an argument that pretends there's no scale or goal to actions.Exactly. Filtering goods through proxies and other companies jumping in due to greed are common when sanctions are involved.