[ericmay]

Well, probably because that's not what is happening.

The US has the right to ban companies from the country (as do other countries). What the US is saying is that the parent company (Bytedance) bust divest Tik Tok or they'll lose access to the US market. Microsoft is interested in it, but it could be a different company buying it. This is different than "you must sell this company to this other company" because the US can't force a foreign entity to do that (as long as that foreign government doesn't also cooperate due to politics of soft power reasons). In the case of China, Bytedance can absolutely refuse to sell Tik Tok, it'll just get banned from operating in the United States. Surely they'd rather take a few billion dollars instead, which is why they are going to sell it.

Actions like this or ones that are similar in spirit happen quite often. And naturally if you look at China, well, frankly, they are getting a taste of their own medicine in some sense.

[glglwty]

Is there any precedence where the executive branch just ban a foreign company without citing the violation of law and going through court or WTO, in the last century?

[ericmay]

Yep ->

"That order marked the sixth time a U.S. president has either blocked a deal or ordered a corporate selloff since Congress authorized the power to intervene in 1988."

WSJ - https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-to-sign-order-demanding-c...

I don't know the details of the others, but one that comes to mind (and maybe is mentioned in the article?) is the blocked acquisition of Qualcomm by Broadcom.

-edit-

The circumstances around some of these may not be exactly the same, but the derivation of power comes from the same source.

Also who cares about the WTO? I don't see the WTO being involved when China forces majority-owned joint ventures or outright bans US companies from operating there. Why would a court be involved either? Bytedance is welcome to sue, I suppose, but Trump (in this case) has the power to issue this order. I guess if we don't like that since it's being used now, we should have Congress vote to take that power away from the current and future presidents.

I'm in favor of this move overall. Besides the toxicity of social networking in general, I just don't see a point in letting Chinese technology companies operate in the US unless it's strictly under favorable terms for us. If they don't like it, then I guess maybe they should let US companies operate freely in their country. This will increasingly end up happening and I say good. China will grow tech companies, and the US will force them to divest or not operate in the US once there is significant money at stake until China plays fair. If they don't want to, well, that's just no big deal. We're doing just fine.

[yorwba]

> I don't see the WTO being involved when China forces majority-owned joint ventures

Did you check? https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds549_e...

[DiogenesKynikos]

WTO accession had massive economic, political and legal implications within China. There's a good review here: [1].

Discussions in the West tend to completely ignore these changes. For example, joint venture requirements have been removed from most sectors of the economy. Or to give another example, an entire legal system to protect and enforce IP has been set up in the last two decades or so, and that system is now very heavily used (including by foreign companies).

1. https://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/iclr/vol27/iss2/6/

[ericmay]

I don’t care what they do. I know China bans Facebook, google, etc. and then requires >50% ventures

[throw987542]

Did you check? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholly_foreign-owned_enterpris...

[ericmay]

Yes. Notice that there are restricted enterprises?

It also doesn’t have anything to do with the banning of US companies.

[busymom0]

Not fully up to date with what eventually happened but few years ago when Grindr was sold to Chinese company, US tried to get them to sell it back to US ownership because it had a lot of confidential location data of military personnel.

[moreorless]

It has since be sold to an American enterprise.

[eunos]

> it'll just get banned from operating in the United States

Worse, it cold be put into entity list, permanently removed from app store and play store.

[xster]

I think this is the real topic to discuss. I think China has been doing very poorly in the past years with all its top companies ultra-distracted by the greed of grabbing fast money from the e-commerce boom but paid no attention to basic infrastructure like chips, OS, CAD/CAE etc. It's all built on sand that can be removed at any moment.

[zaro]

> In the case of China, Bytedance can absolutely refuse to sell Tik Tok, it'll just get banned from operating in the United States.

How is that not extortion ?

[moreorless]

It is. Plain and simple.

edit: spelling

[moreorless]

According to this Time's article, President Trump is ordering them to sell it.

https://time.com/5874408/trump-order-bytedance-sell-tiktok-u...