this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2024
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[–] [email protected] 50 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It'd be really funny if ByteDance doesn't sell and TikTok getting banned crashes the economy.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Given the CCP involvement in their country's businesses, I think there will be a lot more involved than would be in other sales. There are already articles talking about how the sale will take longer than the 6-month timeline (if it passes the Senate/President and any potential legal challenges).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Any sale of a hundred+ billion dollar company takes years. Look at the attempted acquisition of ARM.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Uh...TikTok is not ARM, or anything close to resembling it.

The US justification for forcing the sale of TikTok may be horseshit political theater for dubious reasons, but that doesn't close the gap of making a TikTok sale anywhere close to resembling ARM.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

$16B US revenue, doubling YoY, gross margin likely in the 70s. Even at the P/S of an established company like Facebook, TikTok's US operations would be worth on the order of $200B. That's on par with the largest acquisitions in history and dwarves Nvidia's acquisition attempt of ARM.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Relative valuations aren't the key differences, it's what the companies do, and what they support.

ARM technology powers the vast majority of mobile devices, and is estimated to have upwards of 30% of the PC CPU market share by 2026.

It's sale, or acquisition, is more than a pissing match between two great powers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

I don’t see there being a sale at all. ByteDance isn’t gonna sell the world’s hottest social media platform simply because a foreign country demands it, and even if it were a lucrative enough offer to be tempting, the CPC wouldn’t allow it anyway. If something like this happened in the other direction, I think 1/4 of the US Senate would go into cardiac arrest on the spot, and there’s exactly a 0% chance it would be allowed to happen

[–] [email protected] 36 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I always found this hilarious. I'm in Canada but this opinion applies to my country too.

Everyone keeps talking about evil undemocratic China, authoritarian, manipulative, immoral, untrustworthy and completely unlike our culture or ideals .

But we choose to conduct billions of dollars worth of business and transactions with them on a regular and ongoing basis.

We shouldn't trust them .... but we can buy everything we use from them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Everyone keeps talking about evil undemocratic China - But we choose to conduct billions of dollars worth of business and transactions with them on a regular and ongoing basis.

That's probably one of the biggest contradictions of capitalism. You can make up all the bullshit (or valid) reasons you want for why something is bad but because money is the only consideration, all of that falls by the wayside the instant they have something to offer that they want.

When communism finally wins, it will be because capitalists were the ones who ultimately funded them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Europe had a view in the 90s–00s that trade can be a vehicle for enforcing peace. That plus capitalist greed let Russia invade Georgia and Crimea before that view changed overnight too late. Similarly countries turn a blind eye on what China is doing

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Why not Mexico?????

[–] [email protected] 26 points 5 months ago
[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago

Absolutely hilarious framing here implying that it's somehow China's fault that US is trying to ban TikTok and now a bunch of US investors are getting fucked.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago

Oh no!

Anyway.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

I wish all American investor dollars a very

permanent Chinese citizenship

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

My money's just fine right here in my bank account. Plus some emergency cash in a drawer in my bedroom. I don't know what the big deal is. Fuck 'em.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sorry but your money in the bank isn't fine, it gets slowly eaten by inflation. The inflation is designed in a way to stimulate your spending as saving them doesn't make economic sense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

As always, keep all your dollars in money

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I love how they are trying to make these wealthy investors sound like your average American. Get fucked losers.