> As a European, I find it quite outrageous to demand a company be sold to the US because it is too successful and valuable to be foreign-held.
These sorts of bad faith comments are so tiresome to read.
We all know that if the foreign country in question was Japan or France then nobody would really give a shit. Even a more neutral country like India or Brazil would likely be completely fine. It's specifically an issue because China is a geopolitical opponent of the US that we're engaged in a sort of new cold war with.
Not to mention, China blocks basically every popular social media site from the US already, and a bunch of other websites and apps besides. Tit-for-tat is very common in trade, you can't expect other countries to leave your foreign ventures untouched if you heavily restrict theirs.
Is your argument seriously, "yeah but if the US doesn't ban things as hard as China, it doesn't count"?
Personally I'd love for the US to ban or restrict more things from China. Not because that's the end state I want, but maybe it'd get China to loosen restrictions so that we'd get closer to parity.
No. My point is that the US is hypocritical about this. Every excuse is found to not call this protectionism. It is protectionism, period.
If Huawei smartphones are a national security threat that justifies a ban, then Xiaomi smartphones are as well. But those are not banned. Why? Because the ban is more for protectionism than for security reasons. Just own it, that's fine.
> Every excuse is found to not call this protectionism. It is protectionism, period.
Agreed, it's a trade issue. And anyone who's been paying even a hint of attention to trade knows that China is WAY more protectionist about foreign companies than the US is.
Reciprocity is or should be part of trade. There is nothing hypocritical about responding to trade restrictions with trade restrictions, any more than responding to an invasion with your own military force is "hypocritical".
> There is nothing hypocritical about responding to trade restrictions with trade restrictions
That's right, but that's not what I said. I keep having to explain it so I'll do it again: what feels hypocritical is that the US don't call those bans trade issues. They call them "national security". If you keep saying "we're the land of the free, China is bad because of their protectionism" and then you do protectionism and say "no no no, we are not doing protectionism, it's national security", then it is hypocritical.
These sorts of bad faith comments are so tiresome to read.
We all know that if the foreign country in question was Japan or France then nobody would really give a shit. Even a more neutral country like India or Brazil would likely be completely fine. It's specifically an issue because China is a geopolitical opponent of the US that we're engaged in a sort of new cold war with.
Not to mention, China blocks basically every popular social media site from the US already, and a bunch of other websites and apps besides. Tit-for-tat is very common in trade, you can't expect other countries to leave your foreign ventures untouched if you heavily restrict theirs.