Assessing the impact of technological sanctions on computer equipment imports

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to assess the risks of economic modernization caused by technological sanctions. Hypothesis: the imposed sanctions had little effect on actual imports of computer hardware components to Russia. Since the sanctions under consideration have been tightened since 2014, it was assumed that there were no fundamental changes in the structure and volume of imports. Analysis of the US export control system showed that there are four reasons for controlling the export to the Russian Federation of a number of computers and their components. For export to the Russian Federation and Belarus all applications for licenses are considered with a presumption of denial. The embargo policy provides for the restriction of exports to Russia of goods of headings 8541 (semiconductor devices) and 8542 (electronic integrated circuits). Enterprises that are considered military end users are restricted from exporting to them chips with high processing speed. The embargo covers quantum computers that are believed not to be manufactured in Russia. The dominant subheadings in the import structure are 8542 31 (microprocessors) and 8542 39 (other integrated circuits). Clusters of exporting countries have been constructed using the methods of principal components and multidimensional scaling. It is established that the main ones are China, Taiwan, Vietnam and Malaysia. Next, an analysis of the dynamics of imports was performed to test the hypothesis. Graphical, quantitative methods of the theory of time series, methods of mathematical statistics and regression analysis are used. For countries without export controls the increase in imports to Russia over 15 years, both in terms of processors (160 %) and integrated circuits (224 %), was an order of magnitude greater than for countries with export controls. As the share of imports from countries without export controls increases, the significance of sanctions decreases, which confirms the formulated hypothesis. At the same time, the “foreign direct product” rule, which allows the US to control exports from Taiwan, could negatively affect this dynamic.