National security experts in the US said Chinese hackers had consistently stolen trade secrets from U.S. defense contractors. This prompted former Director of the National Security Agency Keith B. Alexander to called Chinese cyber theft of intellectual property as "the greatest transfer of wealth in history." He states:
"Competitors branded Huawei a cut-rate vendor of copycat equipment, and companies including Cisco Systems and Motorola filed lawsuits over alleged trade secret theft." - Reuters
In August 2017, the US opened a formal investigation into attacks on the intellectual property of the U.S. and its allies, China requires technology transfer through foreign direct investment (FDI).
A number of experts have focused on what they consider China's "theft" of intellectual property, and that it forces U.S. firms that want to do business there into transferring its confidential technology and trade secrets before having access to their market. Although that kind of transfer is disallowed by the WTO, the negotiations are usually conducted in secret to avoid penalties. In April 2018, Trump denied that the dispute was actually a trade war, saying "that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S." He added: "Now we have a trade deficit of $500 billion a year, with intellectual property (IP) theft of another $300 billion.
The Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property states “Just agreeing to manufacture in China opens yourself” to theft or forced technology transfer. It requires a U.S. response based on “strength and leverage.”
In 2018 the American Chamber of Commerce in China learned that over half its members thought that "leakage of intellectual property" was an important concern when doing business there.
America has also finally turned the page on decades of unfair trade deals that sacrificed our prosperity and shipped away our companies, our jobs, and our Nation’s wealth. The era of economic surrender is over. From now on, we expect trading relationships to be fair and to be reciprocal. We will work to fix bad trade deals and negotiate new ones. And we will protect American workers and American intellectual property, through strong enforcement of our trade rules.