India, Aug. 11 -- The Donald Trump administration has allowed chip manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD to export their products to China, provided they share 15% of their export revenues with the US government. Such an arrangement is weird - there is no other way to put it - by present-day norms. It can only be compared with imperial charters allowing the likes of East India Company to trade with other countries a couple of centuries ago, in return for tributes to the ruling monarch. However, it would be naive to leave it at that. There is a larger game here.

Chip companies do not seem to be complaining about Trump's move and expectedly so. The only option they had other than sharing 15% revenues with the US government, was having no re...