News from China continues to reveal the damage of export controls foisted on U.S. chipmakers by the Biden administration. The controls have in varying ways remained in place under the second Trump administration, only for them to be given more life by Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jim Banks (R-IN), Chuck Shumer (D-NY), Tom Cotton (R-AR).

American chipmakers like Nvidia, AMD, Intel and others are being handed the bill for these needless intrusions in the marketplace, though in ways well beyond lost sales. In a very real sense, to focus on sales lost in the near-term is to miss the much bigger, long-term point.

Still, to grasp the long-term damage of export controls, it’s useful to start with sales lost in the near term. Before the last two presidential administrations and Congress more broadly happened upon protectionism and industrial policy as national security strategies, Chinese technology corporations were size buyers of U.S.-produced chips. It’s not just that they were and are the best, it’s the brand elevation inside China and around the world that comes with your product having American genius inside of it.

The previous state of commercial play was precisely what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) didn’t want. Its members, like members of the U.S. political class, view trade as war rather than what it is, the antidote to war born of the prosperous division of labor. Which means the actions of the Biden administration and beyond played into their hands.

Fast forward to the present, a recent report in the South China Morning Post indicated major growth for the top Chinese semiconductor companies. More specifically, surging sales for Hua Hong Grace Semiconductor and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation increased profits 385% and 267% respectively in the second quarter “amid a spike in demand for domestic artificial intelligence chips free of U.S. export controls.”

With an eye on being evenhanded about the sales and profit surge, some of it was inevitable. That’s because success begets imitators eager to compete away profits. In other words, global excitement about artificial intelligence (AI) and its extraordinary potential was going to result in more global competition for Nvidia, AMD, and Intel no matter what. But as the title of this piece indicates, the worst damage can’t be measured in sales, or lack thereof.

To see why, consider how the best salespeople interact with customers. It’s not about product moved, rather it’s about sales rooted in consultation. It’s about genuinely grasping how their products and services can help customers to prosper over time. The best salespeople aren’t the best talkers, rather they’re the best listeners. By learning customer needs, they not only figure out how best to integrate their products into customer operations, they also develop a sense of what their customers will eventually need.

Which means lost sales are but headlines that miss the bigger story: as unreliability rooted in political uncertainty enters the lexicon about world-leading American chipmakers, the need for other sources grows. Which means Nvidia et al don’t just miss out on sales, rather they miss out on crucial and evolving customer knowledge that can best be attained through deep relationships made deeper not just from sales, but from understanding precisely how the products and services sold to customers are used, how they’re not, how they more than measure up, and how they don’t.

To make the shame of export controls about sales lost is to insult the seriousness of the sales process. The latter is about relationships built over substantive time spent. Political error means less of what’s valuable, with long-term losses that can’t so easily be calculated.