If those politicians are suggesting that each and every US company stop trading with China then they really have no clue about global trade.
The Chinese will certainly retaliate and call in the huge amounts of US Debt that they hold. What then GOP? That act alone would guarantee that the USA defaults on its debt repayments. That would plunge the world into a very deep depression.
These people really do need to be taught about the laws of unintended consequences and how they apply to the US State as a whole.
That said, the human rights crimes that the PRC are doing to its citizens is abhorrent. Much worse went on during the cultural revolution but it is still wrong.
I'd like the GOP to clean up its own human rights scandal first. Denying US citizens the right to vote is a crime against the constitution but they don't see it like that.
You clearly have no idea how treasury bonds work. China can't just "call them in". Treasury bonds are issued for a fixed period, from 1 month to 30 years. If China doesn't want them anymore, they would have to sell them on the open market likely at a steep discount and they would lose money. It would affect China far more than it would affect us. We would continue paying interest on those bonds like we always have and would by no means guarantee we would default (most rates on T bonds are less than 2%). China own only 4% of our debt anyway, and China uses their US bond holding to backup up their currency and keep it weak compared to US dollars to increase the value of their exports.
And, the GOP never denied a US citizen the right to vote. Hyperbole much?
What would happen if Apple pulled out of China? Apple stock would crash and burn. Most of their hardware is made in China or with components that are made in China.
Apple pulling out of China is a two-edged sword. They (Apple) both make and sell product in the PRC. If they stop selling there, then the Chinese Government could make building stuff very difficult. Then they could make getting the product out of china difficult.
With nothing to sell Apple stock would plummet. It would also bring down the whole tech sector. For some in the USA, this would be a good thing but for millions who have tech stocks in their 401K's this would be a financial disaster.
What price the re-election of this 'gang of four' representatives then? 5000/1?
Four members of Congress sent a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook urging the company reassess its business dealings with China. Four members of Congress, Ken Buck, Scott Fitzgerald, Burgess Owens, and Dan Bishop signed a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook asking Apple to end its "near total capitulation to the communist regime in China." The letter describes Apples relationship with the Chinese government as a contradiction to Apple's core values of holding privacy as a fundamental human right.
It sounds like those congresspeople read one of my posts on this forum. It sounds like a direct quote from my posts.
All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.
That’s because the investigation into January 6 is nothing but a sham. It’s just another election issue for the Democrats. Believe me, they don’t want what really happened coming out. It wasn’t an insurrection. It wasn’t an attempt to overthrow the government. It was a few hundred idiots who got out of control, some bad actors and even some on the other side of the political spectrum who infiltrated the group. There were no weapons found. It was planned mostly on Twitter and Facebook. None of the fatalities had anything to do with violence. This is just an excuse to continue locking down the capitol and silence conservatives. We can expect more of this as we approach the midterms. The Democrats know it is likely to be an electoral bloodbath for them.
Wow! You know, there is a distinct difference between stupidity and ignorance. Stupidity is the lack of capacity to know or understand. Whereas ignorance is a lack of knowledge or understanding. But the most malignant form of cancer in this country is willful ignorance - “I don’t care what the truth is, this is what I believe!”
Yep, China is Apple’s Achilles' heel when it comes to their pontifications about human rights, privacy, security, diversity, inclusion. It all rings as hollow when they kowtow to a repressive, totalitarian, genocidal regime. Never mind LGBTQ+ issues there. And yet some here are giddy about the prospect of China overtaking the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. What pressure will that put on republican democracies?
So what does Apple do? Follow the advice of politicians and lose one of their biggest markets, shrink dramatically in size and become the next target on Wall Street for extinction stories?
Or do they keep the status quo and suffer the slings and arrows of their hypocrisy?
Guess what - Apple has a 3rd option apart from the 2 options that you listed. I.e. shut up their mouth about "human rights, privacy, security, diversity, inclusion etc" all over the world. Then there won't be any hypocrisy for others to talk about. Apple has brought this on themselves by their own actions. No other company "preaches" like Apple does. They do NOT get called out because they don't preach as much as Apple does. Apple does not need to do anything else - just shutting their mouth about the "moral high ground" will do.
Thankfully you’re not in charge. Just because they are UNABLE to practice completely what they preach under the current regime in one country, doesn't mean they should just give up. Are you assuming that the US government has no ability to access your iPhone or iCloud data? How naive of you. Why are you even engaged in the Apple ecosystem? Head over to google and Facebook! They’re real big on privacy!
These four Republicans all live in rural areas enjoying most of freedom. However, more Americans live in cities depending on governments enforcing order.
I know this isn't the main focus of the article, but how exactly is China communist? When Xi Jinping took over, he abandoned any pretense of Marxism at the government level. Mao famously executed landlords and seized the land, but since 2007, they're back to having personal ownership of land ("private" seems like a bad word to use with the level of surveillance they have). They have long had personal ownership of other property and money. They are openly capitalist at nearly all levels of society, yet we still call them "communist China".
The ruling party is called the Chinese Communist Party, but they seem no more communist than the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is democratic or a republic, or the USA PATRIOT Act is patriotic. Fascist and totalitarian seem like good descriptors, but communist really doesn't.
In principle, I agree that Apple should do less business with totalitarian governments. They're a publicly-traded company, though, and are therefore obligated to do as much business as they can. If Apple were to stop selling things in China, that would reduce their revenue by tens of billions of dollars per year. The stock price would tank, and a lot of their shareholders would sue them. How do these representatives propose to address that inevitable outcome?
I think there are a lot of theories that may help explain this. The word "communist" is a culturally ingrained "trigger word" or "signalling word" in much of western society, especially in the US where its been ingrained through cultural and political indoctrination to elicit an automatic negative response. In truth, the word "communism" should probably elicit a pathetic or pitiful response since it has proven in-practice to be a near universally failed ideology for all involved.
Even then, the word communism was for a long time, at least during the Cold War Era, essentially a stand-in for the words "Soviet Union." Communism in and of itself was never an existential threat to US national security or the normal social order. It's always shown itself to be a path to societal failure. But the Soviet Union certainly was a real threat to the US, and probably would have been a much greater threat had they not hobbled themselves with the inherent failure that is communism. Perhaps the West did not want to call out the Soviet Union by name so soon after they were so instrumental in defeating the Axis powers in WW II.
Who knows why the word play continues. All I know is that I don't fear ideologies. But I do fear bad actions by bad actors - under any name.
All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.
That’s because the investigation into January 6 is nothing but a sham. It’s just another election issue for the Democrats. Believe me, they don’t want what really happened coming out. It wasn’t an insurrection. It wasn’t an attempt to overthrow the government. It was a few hundred idiots who got out of control, some bad actors and even some on the other side of the political spectrum who infiltrated the group. There were no weapons found. It was planned mostly on Twitter and Facebook. None of the fatalities had anything to do with violence. This is just an excuse to continue locking down the capitol and silence conservatives. We can expect more of this as we approach the midterms. The Democrats know it is likely to be an electoral bloodbath for them.
Is the only thing considered a weapon a gun? Less then lethal weapons can kill or seriously hurt someone just like a gun. If you insult someone and they beat you down with a bat is that bat considered a weapon? An officer was hit with and killed by a fire extinguisher.. is that extinguisher a weapon?
weap·on
/ˈwepən/
noun
noun: weapon; plural noun: weapons
a thing designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage.
Are explosives were planted near the capitol considered a weapon? I think the FBI may have a different idea what is or isn't a weapon..smh.
All four are Republicans. All four voted against an investigation of the January 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. That gives you an idea of how deep their support of "democratic principles" actually goes.
That’s because the investigation into January 6 is nothing but a sham. It’s just another election issue for the Democrats. Believe me, they don’t want what really happened coming out. It wasn’t an insurrection. It wasn’t an attempt to overthrow the government. It was a few hundred idiots who got out of control, some bad actors and even some on the other side of the political spectrum who infiltrated the group. There were no weapons found. It was planned mostly on Twitter and Facebook. None of the fatalities had anything to do with violence. This is just an excuse to continue locking down the capitol and silence conservatives. We can expect more of this as we approach the midterms. The Democrats know it is likely to be an electoral bloodbath for them.
Is the only thing considered a weapon a gun? Less then lethal weapons can kill or seriously hurt someone just like a gun. If you insult someone and they beat you down with a bat is that bat considered a weapon? An officer was hit with and killed by a fire extinguisher.. is that extinguisher a weapon?
weap·on
/ˈwepən/
noun
noun: weapon; plural noun: weapons
a thing designed or used for inflicting bodily harm or physical damage.
Are explosives were planted near the capitol considered a weapon? I think the FBI may have a different idea what is or isn't a weapon..smh.
If these clowns want to uphold the principles of privacy, they might want to start at home, by enacting a U.S. version of the GPDR, and preventing companies like Facebook from tracking users across the internet, or allowing the data mining industry to go unchecked.
Next, explicitly forbid the U.S. government, and its intelligence agencies like the FBI from trying to force backdoors into encryption, and any of them from engaging in warrantless domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens, whether directly, or indirectly by purchasing information from data brokers.
Not going to hold my breath for any of that to happen anytime soon, or ever.
This unfortunately is how you do business in China. That is where pretty much everyone’s supply chain comes from.
This is why there is a shortage of chips due to the pandemic. Production stopped in China.
If you really want change, the United States has to figure out if they want to go thru the pain of bringing back manufacturing here. Things will get more expensive like they are with inflation, much more expensive, but the other side of the coin is we aren’t capitulating to China at least when it comes to manufacturing.
[...]
Things wouldn’t have to get more expensive if corporations and their 1% executives wouldn’t be so greedy and self-entitled. And then there’s the Wall Street gambling den...
People are conditioned to not question the excessive hoarding of wealth, as if it’s an American ethos to be greedy... so long as you can cloak it in “success”. This thinking overrides critical thinking skills when talking about economy and cost.
This unfortunately is how you do business in China. That is where pretty much everyone’s supply chain comes from.
This is why there is a shortage of chips due to the pandemic. Production stopped in China.
If you really want change, the United States has to figure out if they want to go thru the pain of bringing back manufacturing here. Things will get more expensive like they are with inflation, much more expensive, but the other side of the coin is we aren’t capitulating to China at least when it comes to manufacturing.
[...]
Things wouldn’t have to get more expensive if corporations and their 1% executives wouldn’t be so greedy and self-entitled. And then there’s the Wall Street gambling den...
People are conditioned to not question the excessive hoarding of wealth, as if it’s an American ethos to be greedy... so long as you can cloak it in “success”. This thinking overrides critical thinking skills when talking about economy and cost.
I get Apple is a business, but they just be honest and stop preaching equality for all, privacy etc when they only mean it if it doesn’t interfere with profit.
So Apple should get out of Russia, and Israel too the list of bad countries is a lot longer in the world than the some what so-called good ones.
What would happen if Apple pulled out of China? Apple stock would crash and burn. Most of their hardware is made in China or with components that are made in China.
Apple pulling out of China is a two-edged sword. They (Apple) both make and sell product in the PRC. If they stop selling there, then the Chinese Government could make building stuff very difficult. Then they could make getting the product out of china difficult.
With nothing to sell Apple stock would plummet. It would also bring down the whole tech sector. For some in the USA, this would be a good thing but for millions who have tech stocks in their 401K's this would be a financial disaster.
What price the re-election of this 'gang of four' representatives then? 5000/1?
The Fire Protection (fire sprinkler) industry would be kaput, this group probably supported every non-union action in the last 65 years, half the country (USA) already does.
It’s to late you have killed the blue-collar union workers in America. Mr American businessman/CEO/Pinkerton (law enforcement). The right to work states will be of no help..
The Gig economy is a LOSER race to the bottom economy.
This unfortunately is how you do business in China. That is where pretty much everyone’s supply chain comes from.
This is why there is a shortage of chips due to the pandemic. Production stopped in China.
If you really want change, the United States has to figure out if they want to go thru the pain of bringing back manufacturing here. Things will get more expensive like they are with inflation, much more expensive, but the other side of the coin is we aren’t capitulating to China at least when it comes to manufacturing.
Next we would look at buying back the $1.09 trillion in debt they hold in treasury bonds.
This is pie in the sky thinking, but by removing the luxuries the people of China get by being the worlds source of manufacturing will force their government into making changes.
It might be too late for that though.
The USA has a tradition of slave labor/non-union/right to work/no education/ voter suppression or health care for all, and more than half the country is fine with that. Our problems as a country come from within the Molly Macquires have lost. China can’t help us we can’t even built a high speed rail system but Japan, France, Germany, and China can….. Can do is gone in many red areas of the country unless you count women’s bodies.
I know this isn't the main focus of the article, but how exactly is China communist? When Xi Jinping took over, he abandoned any pretense of Marxism at the government level. Mao famously executed landlords and seized the land, but since 2007, they're back to having personal ownership of land ("private" seems like a bad word to use with the level of surveillance they have). They have long had personal ownership of other property and money. They are openly capitalist at nearly all levels of society, yet we still call them "communist China".
They're actually more fascist now than communist, and they certainly aren't capitalist. Sure, they graciously allow one private ownership of property, but the government gets to tell one what they may and may not do with said property.
Comments
And, the GOP never denied a US citizen the right to vote. Hyperbole much?
Perfect case in point.
Like wtf are you talking about? Stop defending this bullshit please...
People are conditioned to not question the excessive hoarding of wealth, as if it’s an American ethos to be greedy... so long as you can cloak it in “success”. This thinking overrides critical thinking skills when talking about economy and cost.
It’s to late you have killed the blue-collar union workers in America. Mr American businessman/CEO/Pinkerton (law enforcement). The right to work states will be of no help..
The Gig economy is a LOSER race to the bottom economy.
The USA has a tradition of slave labor/non-union/right to work/no education/ voter suppression or health care for all, and more than half the country is fine with that. Our problems as a country come from within the Molly Macquires have lost. China can’t help us we can’t even built a high speed rail system but Japan, France, Germany, and China can….. Can do is gone in many red areas of the country unless you count women’s bodies.