They can't prevent the innovation, competition and engineering, but their lobbying makes sure that the Chinese competition doesn't enter the market, and if it does, with severe obstacles on the way.
Their biggest customer is the US federal government, taken in aggregate across agencies, IBM is one of the largest federal IT contractors, and deep public-sector and financial-services contracts in the US make it IBM's single largest national market. No individual commercial company comes close to the government's aggregate spend.
Now, equivalent product, another company, they want to sell to the government twice cheaper, can they ? nope, it will be IBM winning.
Furthermore, according to the lobbyists, China = evil but they forget that a lot of software contains Chinese code.
https://www.ibm.com/policy/contributions-and-expenditures
Their biggest customer is the US federal government, taken in aggregate across agencies, IBM is one of the largest federal IT contractors, and deep public-sector and financial-services contracts in the US make it IBM's single largest national market. No individual commercial company comes close to the government's aggregate spend.
Now, equivalent product, another company, they want to sell to the government twice cheaper, can they ? nope, it will be IBM winning.
Furthermore, according to the lobbyists, China = evil but they forget that a lot of software contains Chinese code.