Telecommunications equipment vendors Nokia and Ericsson may be forced to move a good part of their operations out of China if a proposed move by the US, to make it mandatory that an 5G equipment used within the country be designed and made outside China, comes into force.

An official in the Trump administration has given a strong hint that the strictures placed on the Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei Technologies by Washington are all part of a gambit to help the US strike a trade deal with China.

The co-founder of ARM Holdings, Dr Hermann Mauser, has urged non-American technology companies not to give in to what he has characterised as "bullying" from the White House in the US-China trade war.