Trump’s anti-China strategy at home will hurt U.S. companies around the world
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S preferred strategy to defeat the Chinese government seems to be to emulate the Chinese government. At least, the White House response to the problems posed by popular smartphone app TikTok seems modeled on Xi Jinping’s brand of nationalist industrial policy.
The TikTok saga has moved over the past few days at the whiplash speed of a video going viral on the platform — from news that a national security review had determined Beijing-based parent ByteDance should divest TikTok, to news that Mr. Trump wanted to ban TikTok, to news that, after all, he supported a bid by Microsoft to buy it. That outcome would be better than several of the alternatives. Local laws in China almost ensure that the regime could get its hands on U.S. citizens’ data held by TikTok should it so desire, and this data is hardly limited to memes and dance compilations. Yet prohibiting the app’s use here, to the extent the gambit succeeded at all, would have stifled expression. Having an experienced U.S. firm control the popular platform is preferable to shutting it down or accepting the current security risks.
