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0 pointssomenameforme1y ago0 comments

Using "the machinery of the state to force private enterprise" is a rather hyperbolic way of describing a phone call. I do agree in general that the government should be much more strongly separated from private enterprise than it is, but a phone call to exert pressure is a ridiculously low standard of governmental pressure, not even just objectively but also what we've seen over the past several years in completely systemic practice.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

exe341y ago· 2 in thread

> hyperbolic way of describing a phone call

A phone call is a bit of a coward way to describe the press secretary moaning about a hostile and political involvement of a (somehow) foreign government intervention to international journalists.

somenameformeOP1y ago

She was referencing this [1] article. And Amazon did indeed exactly what she said. They launched a side gig "Chinese Books", guided by the Chinese propaganda arm NPPA, at the behest of China exclusively in order to further their reach and business in China. That, while complying with ever more onerous requests of the Chinese government including removing reviews for certain Chinese books, granting complete control of "their" cloud services in China to Chinese government approved companies, and so forth.

It creates a reasonable argument that Amazon will do basically anything to get some of that sweet Chinese $$$, which makes their unprecedented foray into politics (at a consumer facing level), in a way that would be completely beneficial to China, look particularly bad. This still has nothing to do with using "the machinery of the state to force private enterprise" or anything like that.

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/amazon-partnered-with-ch...

exe341y ago

Wait, because Amazon followed the law in China while doing business in China, anything they do in the US that the Orangefuhrer doesn't like is..... something beneficial to China?

The claim was that Amazon wanted to display the added tax due to the tariff separately, which is what the white house histrionics were in response to. There is no indication that only Chinese imports would have been labelled. China is not the only country that Trumpet added tariffs on.

He relies on MAGAs not knowing what a tariff is. He wants to blame price rises on Biden - if it becomes too obvious that the buyer pays the tariffs, he would lose a lot more support.

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