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republicans are gonna win a supermajority in the midterms because of this (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 years ago* by to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
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lol. lmao even

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[–] 52 points 2 years ago (8 children)

"Americans deserve to see our exciting Inauguration on Monday, as well as other events and conversations," [Trump] wrote. "I would like the United States to have a 50% ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands and allow it to say up. Without U.S. approval, there is no Tik Tok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe trillions."

Hopefully ByteDance doesn't get strong-armed into 50% US ownership. That would be, like, the most awkward divorced parents situation ever

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  • [–] 40 points 2 years ago (7 children)

    I don't know how they can get strong armed, they're clearly willing to call the USs bluff and get banned. What other leverage is there?

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  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

    The key here is the joint venture, because it opens up the possibility for a US-China joint venture inside China as well.

    Read my comment here in the news mega for how the US can potentially play this game.

    If the US says you share your TikTok algorithm with us, and you let Meta inside China and we share some of our AI technology with you and lift the other AI restrictions Biden has put into place, will you take it?

    If the US says what if Meta/some US tech companies invest $100 billion into China to help boost your domestic consumption, will you take it?

    If the US says, we will cut the Fed rates further in 2025 to help alleviate your local government debt burden, will you take it?

    In other words, the stick is mutually assured destruction - if you don’t want to play ball, I’ll make the situation so much worse for both of us. The carrot is you give us some of what we want and we promise not to further our threats, and we both come out of this with our respective PR wins. You have 1.4 billion of people to take care of, think about them.

    It’s a classic dilemma of “saving your economy” and “preserving or giving up parts of your sovereignty” for China. There are going to be red lines, and there are going to be compromises. All the tariffs, sanctions and bans set the initial conditions for negotiations that can then be bargained down to a point where both sides are satisfied with.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    In these types of stand-offs, the Americans usually win, as they are at any point prepared to inflict massive damage upon their own population solely to hurt their adversary. Sure, the tariffs are going to hurt China's export-oriented economy, but it's also going to cause massive price inflation among Americans, which is going to push even more of them into desperate poverty. However the people in Washington who make these decisions don't have to care about an extra 10 million people being made homeless over 5 years, or 50 million going bankrupt because of the added pressure on their finances (mind the recent articles from various banks about American credit card defaults being at the highest level since 2009-2010).

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago*

    When it comes to exerting brutality against its own people, capitalists will always win over socialists.

    The worst part is that many export economies that get destroyed in the process will still have to get IMF loans to save them anyway aka privatization, so they might as well cede some of the conditions to the US imperialists and pray that the worst won’t come to them.

    China is a far stronger economy though but certainly not without significant challenges in its economy, so we’ll see how this plays out.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Is TikTok and US AI tech really seen as real leverage? They seem more like distractions and spectacle. Tarrif's, sanctions, the fed etc I could see making significant compromises but I don't really know enough about the situation and what their analysis of how much the economy would be helped etc.

    I thought Meta was out of China because they didn't want to follow Chinese law so got kicked out, would they really change the laws for Meta? (Maybe Meta has changed its mind and would rather be in China than not)

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    Well it's not clear that they can even legally sell the algorithm to the US, but all things are negotiable and perhaps China is also willing to compromise on this issue to win favor with Trump from the get-go. I hope that's not the case but I don't think any politician on any side cares about the app as such, it's a proxy war of sorts.

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