[elp]

I think this sends a really strong message to the rest of the world to try avoid buying US technology because they might get locked into arbitrary rules sometime in the future.

There was an article in The Economist a few month back (can't find the link right now) that suggested that China might secretly like Donald Trump and accept the short term pain of his presidency because of the long term gain of the wedge he is driving between the USA and the rest of the world.

[addicted]

If you just look at the Coronavirus as an example.

The world would be quite happy pinning the blame on China.

Instead, that would put them on the side of Donald Trump who is doing it in the most ham handed and transparently political way, and is, worse, messing with countries’ abilities to protect their citizens with a vaccine, by trying to buy away their companies, acquire exclusive rights, and refusing to sign any Coronavirus patent sharing agreements.

So as much as pretty much every leader in the world would like to blame China, thanks to Trump it’s hard for them to do so.

So in a way Trump is definitely helping China.

And that’s before we take into account the shattering of the image of American effectiveness and competence that Trump’s disastrous response has caused.

[anthony_doan]

I think China's government should do something about all those viruses originating from their country.

I understand if it's an accident like MERS from middle east or ebola from Africa. But the frequency of China is a lot, they're up to 3 deadly viruses now: SARS, Covid19, and Avian Flu.

China should at least share their health data on pandemic of these viruses. So other countries can decide a plan of actions. I'm sure they can do it in a way to anonymize these records.

[odshoifsdhfs]

You do know that at least the 'trump trying to buy company that is doing vaccine' has been just a rumour and executives of the company have said it wasn't true right? [1]

I'm no fan of Trump (not even american) but I feel that since it is easy to make him a fool on news reports, anything he does/says (or in some cases, doesn't do/say) makes big headlines so news reports tend to paint him in the worst possible light (drives revenue) and don't give a shit about what is really the truth.

During quarantine I was stuck about 2 months at my parents house and had basically 24h news cycle on TV. It is funny to see both national and international news to 'mock' Trump for something, and actually say nice things about other countries that did exactly the same. For example, when US stopped flights from china and then europe, news anchors were calling him everything from racist to idiot, when european countries did, they were smart to try and prevent the spread.

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/trump-coronavirus-vaccine-ge...

[threeseed]

An offer is a formal document of intent that's typically at the end of a negotiation.

It's quite possible that Trump simply reached out to the lead investor or others to ask about the possibility of making such an offer. That investor then informs the government who then gets upset and leaks inevitably happen.

Whenever there is a he said/she said situation the truth is often in the middle somewhere.