One reason for the United States being seen as a good place to do business is because it is consistent. You don't need to worry about being subjected to the whi

One reason for the United States being seen as a good place to do business is because it is consistent. You don't need to worry about being subjected to the whims of a strongman in order to do business in the US; there is supposed to be a firewall between the business of government and certain political pressures. Regardless of the risks and challenges increasingly posed by companies that have, at best, murky relationships with the folks in Zhongnanhai, attempting to circumvent this process is an outrageously offensive and damaging to the long-term ability for the US to be able to assert rule of law and democratic processes as the way forward. One can cynically argue it was always a flimsy patina anyway, but the behavior of, whatever this is at the moment, is disorganized, suffers from shifting reasoning, dubious personal intervention by POTUS, and lacks the due process that we demand of the US government. There has been not a single shred of meaningful evidence presented to the public that TikTok itself is engaged in active spying or intelligence gathering on the part of the Beijing. I would not be surprised if the federal government had evidence that Bytedance is using TikTok for nefarious reasons, but as the saga has dragged on it becomes increasingly unclear what evidence exists. First it had to divest; now it has a "strategic partnership" that's somehow still being sold as a divestiture? On what basis are we to trust the random proclamations of an executive branch that blatantly and unabashedly lies to the press and the public at-large even over trivial nonsense, declares all unfavorable news as "fake" and suffers endless information leaks from people who have repeatedly been burned by its mercurial cast of characters?