
Trump Told Ellison, McMillon He Wants U.S. Paid in TikTok Deal - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-19/trump-spoke-with-oracle-s-ellison-as-he-weighs-tiktok-deal
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wombatmobile
When trying to understand China's commercial policies, consider that China has
experienced a different mercantile history to America.

America has never been invaded by foreign gunships and forced to allow foreign
merchants to import opium to addict its citizens in order to fix their own
countries balance of payments problems.

Opium Wars

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars)

If America were to experience something like that, how might the experience
change America's future commercial policies?

If Pearl Harbour and 9/11 are any guide, America might become less tolerant of
foreign businesses operating in its markets.

But then again, America is a complicated marketplace.

The Promotion and Marketing of OxyContin: Commercial Triumph, Public Health
Tragedy

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2622774/)

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dzonga
would this be reverse crony-capitalism ? most times, gvt would want a cut on
illegal enterprises or morally grey things e.g mafia operations or
prostitution etc but now this is surprising

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m0zg
Depending how the deal is structured he might be right in demanding that US
government is paid. If e.g. the government is providing any kind of funding
(which it probably is, since we're talking non-trivial amounts of money on a
short notice), there needs to either be a buy-out or some other compensation.

Ultimately though, this whole thing is about giving the Chinese a taste of
their own medicine, and more of the same should be expected until they buckle,
which they will. There's really no way to operate in China at any kind of
scale without total control by the Chinese government. Once that changes,
different, less onerous arrangements can be made in the US.

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dragonwriter
> Ultimately though, this whole thing is about giving the Chinese a taste of
> their own medicine,

No, it about giving _America_ a taste of Chinese state-directed industry
medicine, it's just that the only legal pretext this Administration has to
hang that on requires foreign own assets as the enabling fact to allow state-
directed sale.

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m0zg
ByteDance is a Chinese company. The US is not getting a taste of anything here
(except in China where it's been reamed for 20 years). Huawei and ByteDance
are.

