During the last few weeks we have been witnessing an escalade in the Tech-Industry by the Trump Administration against the Chinese Tech-Giants Huawei, Bytedance (Tiktok) and Tencent (WeChat). Everything is being accomplished in the name of “National Security” without any legal grounds to support this within the constitution. Huawei wants to be forced out of market by cutting out the suppliers that has in any shape or form of American technology being intellectual property, raw materials or production line in their product or service.
And Tiktok app that has a user base with over 100 million users in the US is being forced to sell their American operation to an American investor, otherwise today 20th of September they are going to be forced to withdraw their App from Google Play (Android) and App Store (iPhone); against this move many American users are changing their account registration to Canada. Selling under this pressure is like selling with a gun pointing at your head, meaning it can be seen as a “Nationalization” and this would mean to Bytedance that the only way out to get their return on investment is to “down sell” their operation.
The American constitution dated 1787 was made with the goal of stimulating free competition by building up a system of laws to secure individual liberty and freedom of choice in keeping with Creator-endowed natural rights, and this was expressed by one of the founding fathers Thomas Jefferson “Agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, the four pillars of our prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.” And, on the other hand one of the fundamentals of Capitalism that pushes out so much the American ideology is that to be able to improve the offer of goods and services it should be done by technological development and the capacity to bring to the public whatever it is they are demanding.
Now, at this point in time the United States is sending out a signal that any foreign company that doesn’t align with the American interests or represent any kind of threat, will be forced to sell or shut down operations in the name of “National Security” without taking into account any other prerogative. And finally, we can see that China has a more crystalline process and easier to align with, where any foreign investor that wants to enter certain industries has to comply with the requisites imposed by Beijing in regards to Intellectual Property, Stockholder composition, etc.