Apple is power (money) and influence for the US, and there is increasing geopolitical tension. It's pretty easy to see this as shooting yourself in the foot.

I am increasingly astounded at the creativity with which people find reasons to NOT hold power to account. This is a good one: because to hold a US business to account is to weaken the US. And the situation is so "tense" right now, how can we afford it? Is there anyone who actually believes this argument, and if they do, do they understand it implies that one should never hold a US firm to account, since there is always geopolitical tension? (The other one is the so-called "prosperity gospel" - basically, the rich and powerful could only possibly get that way if they were good and Godly people. Wealth and power become evidence for goodness! Incredible!)

seems basically a restatement of the whole what's good for GM is good for America misquote https://blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2016/04/when-a-quote-is-n... which is anyway from a different time when all of a company's production was centered in the country they headquartered at.

The thing about transnational corporations like Apple is that due to their size they are, to some extent, independent of the diktats of any one state like the US. While the usual power relationship between the state and a corporation is, roughly speaking, obey the law or we will dissolve you and lock up your executives, that relationship is less clear when it comes to a company such as Apple. This is due to two reasons. First its' transnational nature means it is not wholly reliant on remaining on the good side of a single state for its continued existence and income, and secondly the state itself comes to rely on the transnational corporation to provide employment, resources and expertise by way of its products, and tax revenues because of its' outsize nature. The result of this is that states find it difficult to wield corporations as tools in geopolitical conflicts and, at the margins, find themselves being wielded. There is thus a tension between the state's need to protect transnationals and promote their interests, and its' need to protect itself (and secondarily its citizen consumers) from their depredations. Actions such as this can be seen within this context. It is partly about protecting citizen consumers from the predatory behaviour of transnational corporations, but it is also about protecting the state and its ability to act independent of the interests of corporations. Finally the state itself is a consumer and has interests as such.

I keep losing track of if they're supposed to be so powerful they answer to no one, or so cowed that they're going to get me extradited to China and sent to jail for life for looking at Winnie the Pooh cartoons.

Neither. Both. They exist in a state of constant negotiation with their hosts, driven by the corporate equivalent of a survival instinct.

I wonder how they compare to the power of the British East India Company at various points in the latter’s history?

Can't think of any army they've fielded, nor any monopoly the government has explicitly granted them, so the analogy has its limits.

Apples and oranges can, despite the aphorism, be compared.

> Apple is power (money) and influence for the US, and there is increasing geopolitical tension.

They're an international company. Apple has already demonstrated a willingness to bow to pressure from China and censor apps etc. China is where their manufacturing and supply chain is, and the consumer market in China is nearly as big as it is in the US.

So it seems more of a liability than a benefit in a geopolitical conflict.

Any country, including the US, would do well to not swallow up the propaganda of the big tech PR departments, using foreign nations as an excuse to prop up national oligarchs.

What's best for any country is creating a healthy ecosystem that is long term competitive. We already went through 20 years of shitty cars because of Japan scares in the 80s, wasn't that enough?

I wasn’t alive in the 80s, what are you referring too?

in the late 70s/early 80s fueled by the oil crisis initially, the American car industry went into pretty steep decline and together with political fears of a rapidly growing Japan the US started to cap the imports of Japanese cars (also motorcycles and punitive measures on other industries) given that they were fuel efficient and appealed to consumers. The American auto industry became more profitable short term but generally up until the late 90s continued to stagnate or decline in particular in quality and efficiency.

American cars had a bad rep internationally (and domestically) probably until the mid 2000s when the industry started to become more competitive again.

Today Tesla is probably one example of an American carmaker that is innovative and I doubt you'll see them demand protectionist measures. International competition remains one of the best drivers for better products.

> Today Tesla is probably one example of an American carmaker that is innovative and I doubt you'll see them demand protectionist measures

For certain values of "American carmaker". It already manufactures more cars in Shanghai than in Fremont, it is controlled by a South African who is certainly not beholden to US interests, and whenever convenient can do a tax inversion to move abroad easily...

Playing favorites will look odd in a supposedly free market.

This argument has a some seriously fascist-y flavour, 'oh no we can't hold people on powerr to account for commiting crime, the time is not right"

What is there gonna be no geoopolitical tension, in 20 years? Untill then theybcan get away with murder?