Former US President Donald Trump’s push to blacklist companies with alleged links to the Chinese military has hit western investors in the pocket. But it does not appear to have hurt the sanctioned companies themselves.

In November, in the dog days of his presidency, Trump issued an executive order barring Americans from investing in a swath of Chinese companies on a Pentagon blacklist, including state-owned telecoms groups China Unicom, China Telecom, and China Mobile; the country’s largest chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation; and infrastructure business China Railway Construction Corporation.

Joe Biden, his successor, has delayed implementation of the ban until May 27, but all the major stock market index providers have already stripped the companies from their flagship indices — in effect, spreading the scope of the boycott beyond the US, to tracker fund investors worldwide.