> Forcing a foreign business to "sell or close" is an insult to the rule of law
These powers are precedented—-this is how antitrust law works. The U.S. has had similar procedures in CFIUS since 1975 [1][2], which is likely how U.S. would enforce this decision.
Keep in mind, it’s not sell or close. It’s an order to unwind the Musical.ly acquisition [3] or face sanctions.
> Since when could the President singlehandedly do it?
Since 1988, when the Congress passed a law saying “all foreign investments that might affect national security may be reviewed and if deemed to pose a threat to security, the President of the United States may block the investment” [1].
Grindr was sold to a Chinese company in 2016 (without submitting the transaction for CFIUS review), and then CFIUS intervened in 2019. It's not late at all.
Similarly, ByteDance had the choice to seek CFIUS review and approval in 2017 before they closed the Musical.ly deal, but chose not to. So CFIUS is intervening now.
That seems like a sale ripe for exploitation. China would have been able to harvest data on closeted individuals and leverage them. Completely agree with blocking this sale.
> President Reagan delegated the review process to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States
Delegating a power doesn’t remove one of that power. And CFIUS pre-dates Exon-Flores, so the Congress giving the President, not CFIUS, these powers is relevant.
We can have a discussion as to whether we like or dislike this action. (I am not a fan.) But suggesting it’s unprecedented or a breakdown of the rule of law is hyperbolic.
Congress gave that power to the president. Congress can take the power back if it wishes but it won't, not even with their showboating faux hatred for Trump. Congress hates making decisions like this one so they punt to the Executive Branch. This is not a unique situation. Over the years Congress has given away lots of its power to the president, which remains even when there is a change in office.
Not if this is the only way to protect its citizens. Not saying it's the case here but forcing a company to sale it's business to a local entity in order to proceed offering it on a local market isn't unheard of and can make sense.
People sharing funny videos on TikTok is not threatening your personal safety. Governments accessing DMs, or whatever data you have in TikTok isn’t a threat to your personal safety.
The notion that TikTok is a threat to national security is ridiculous. Truly, “national security” has lost its meaning.
Should american apps be therefore banned by the other countries? I'm talking about american apps as the issue here is china vs usa, otherwise any other country that produces apps is probably guilty of the same collection.
1) Most non-Chinese apps are already banned in China.
2) The world trusts US companies because unlike China the US is not a dictatorship, has a functioning, independent judiciary and generally abides by international law. So there is a far greater level of trust there because there are legal mechanisms to prevent breaches.
This seems to ignore the Snowden revelations. I don't think most of the world trusts US companies qualitatively more than they trust Chinese companies for these kinds of apps.
Also, the discussion was about national security and you are giving different arguments here. How is this related to national security?
Is this really true? You do not think China's actions in Hong Kong has put more doubts into China's policy on human rights compared to United States?
If you tell me you believe they are equal, I'll take your word for it. While the United States has plenty of flaws, I think they are still far more trusted when it comes to human rights.
You discount how easily and quickly it is for countries (e.g. the US) to go full retard, when the evidence is literally right in your face. That's what a blind ideologue looks like, folks.
> The world trusts US companies because unlike China the US is not a dictatorship, has a functioning, independent judiciary and generally abides by international law.
I feel like this always get short shrift in whataboutism discussions.
In China, everything is by law in service and subordinate to the Party.
And the military has already acknowledged that they have a problem with the rampant use of private devices. So any app that harvests a lot of real-time location data can be a problem.
Also if I was the Chinese government I absolutely would be analysing audio/video and capturing contacts for any phones at known military GPS locations.
First of all, you didn’t mention anything about the military in your first post. So maybe you should read up on how to make a point comprehensively before telling somebody else to read up on something. The information that you mentioned, by itself, does not affect national security. And obviously, any sort of information that one can gather on the military is helpful to the enemy. That’s why they don’t do all sorts of things that civilians commonly do.
Anyway, maybe ban the military from installing apps or using civilian phones if it’s a problem??
That article you linked to was not even about TikTock it was about some other app. So removing TikTock is not going to fix the problem.
Sure. And TikTok isn’t going to be used by China to send commandos into the US to kill you. China isn’t going to harm you with TikTok. US national security is not threatened by Americans using TikTok.
I'm glad a few people have common sense. Anybody who's even used TikTok for 1min could figure that out. There definitely brain washed racist fools that give any credence serial liar like Trump
> If China-based engineers have access to TikTok's US-based servers, they can still hand over data to the CCP (or be forced to do so).
1. That is illegal.
2. Theoretically this also currently applies to Google, Microsoft, Google (any company which has devs in China) and is a solved problem. Almost all people don't have physical access to data, and those who do need to go through access reviews to do anything.
Quite the contrary: it’s illegal to not share data with government if requested:
> Two pieces of legislation are of particular concern to governments — the 2017 National Intelligence Law and the 2014 Counter-Espionage Law. Article 7 of the first law states that "any organization or citizen shall support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work in accordance with the law," adding that the the state "protects" any individual and organization that aids it.
But a first step would be to get rid of its internal committee of the Chinese Communist Party. And to stop making joint venture with government agencies.
To put it in other words, if there was a dedicated spot for the US secretary of defence on the board of Google, how fast do you think other countries would take some actions against Google ?
> stop making joint venture with government agencies.
Good point, I don't know they have JVs with government agencies before, had to do some research on this.
> get rid of its internal committee of the Chinese Communist Party
This is hard, if not impossible, if you meant "党委" ("party committee") or "党支部" ("party branch"), because CCP demands any organization with more than 3 party members SHOULD have one. ("should" should be interpreted roughly as the same word in RFC Requirement Levels) And just like they usually have no problem if people chose to deny joining the party but may hassle you forever if you quit, if you try to shutdown an existing "committee" it would be seen as hostile.
That being said, most of the mid-to-large-sized startups are actively ignoring these requirements until being forced, because apparently even if you are required to do so, you have to go through a hairy application process. And the "committee" in most corps (including mega corps) are essentially an empty shell, a symbolic thing to make CCP happy, so corps usually have no motivation to change the status quo.
Yet CCP do extremely care about these symbolic stuff, it is even forcing foreign companies to do this, IIRC Disney agreed to do so.
Have you ever had to take a case to court?
What percentage of your annual income did that cost?
How long did it take to work its way through the system?
Was there a finding of wrongdoing or an out-of-court settlement?
Would you do that again?
Would you want to do that for every interaction you have with the government?
This is one of those shortcuts we use to cut out complexity, but in process, we create blind spots for ourselves.
It is not reasonable to expect things to either have opinions or not. An adult should have the sophistication to read something and understand what is opinion and what is fact. I get that many adults these days apparently lack that ability, but that doesn't excuse it.
I use it as a shortcut because I got tired of reading BS using the skills you describe. Now I don't read the opinion section at all. Once bitten twice shy.
Sure, but this is impossible to escape. Even if you're looking at a dry set of facts, there was editorial decisions made regarding what to put on that list and what to leave off. There is literally nothing you can read where you can escape the opinions of others.
It matters that we recognize patterns of unaccountability and lazy leadership. The issues with the presidency are much larger than Trump and if we ignore that it will keep happening.
Not if China don't reciprocate the openness of the market (which they don't). Only fools will let them steamroll like that. I'm no Trump fan but this should have happened decades ago.
Rule of law is very important, but part of the problem is the "law" is pretty expansive with the powers it gives to the President. So I don't necessarily think there is a "rule of law" problem in this instance, but instead a problem with the extent of powers given to the federal government in general and to the President specifically. Disclaimer: I haven't read a good legal analysis of Trump's actions as of yet.
This is a long standing problem with the size, scope, and complexity of our federal government.
One of the things I do "enjoy" about Trump is how his actions gets everyone to argue for a less powerful federal government. It would be nice if these structural arguments weren't dependent on who was in the White House, but it is nice to hear them anyway.
And working with a country which enforces that practice for over 40 years is not? (China if you didn't notice).
This is the only way to truly fight back to their own anti-competitive practices. Either that, or outright banning them from doing business until they change their own laws, and honestly I much prefer the second option, even though I can tolerate the current solution proposed by Trump.
What Trump is doing is completely within the law otherwise TikTok and its investors would simply file a lawsuit.
And every day governments around the world block mergers and acquisitions on competition grounds and block companies from being involved in sensitive projects e.g. Huawei.
It's not a criminal proceeding. These are arbitrary powers granted to the President by Congress. If you want to change that, lobby your Congressperson to repeal the 1988 law mentioned elsewhere in this thread.
