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Comment by Analemma_ | Hacker News Reader

This is the right decision, but is it normal for M&As to be blocked by executive order rather than by a DOJ decision, or is this a Trump thing?

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> Trump acted on a recommendation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.

Seems legit.

I know we all love to bash Trump, but he might not be entirely evil. Sometimes he's not treated fairly, that said it's all well deserved that's for sure :)

Or, his random chaotic approach may accidentally do the right thing sometimes out of shear probability. A broken clock is right at least twice a day, a random clock is right randomly.

Or, he isn't operating on a random chaotic approach.

No rational person actually believe that POTUS really is 'random' and 'chaotic'.

This type of comment has no purpose except as a cheap shot at a disliked president. It simply lowers the S/N ratio and brings HN closer to reddit.

Also, correct spelling is 'sheer'.

Speak for yourself. Trump acts almost entirely on impulse which is close enough to random.

In fact, he described his own thought processes perfectly in the quote: "I don't stand by anything." [1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/05/...

As everyone here is saying the merger would create too much concentration and not enough competition, but that's not the justification that the White House put forward. They said national security which seems far-fetched.

If the merger had gone through, and national security was a concern, I'd imagine someone could make good, reliable money by manufacturing chips in the US for the government at a small scale.

National security here is an excuse to stick it to China.

It has happened 4 times before, once by the current administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Foreign_Investmen...

My previous employer (Sourcefire) was blocked from being bought by Checkpoint by CFIUS. Though the president didn't sign an order, the deal got a lot of scrutiny and likely would have been blocked.

https://www.securityfocus.com/news/11382

I wonder how many cases there were like this.

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