The cynic in me thinks the acid test is whether the NSA can lean on them.
- As a foreigner, I'm amazed by how little weight Americans seem to put on international competitiveness will certainly rile up a lot of readers. Those who don't like the plan and thus disagree with it being equated as "American" just like that who don't think it will ruin everything.
- The second sentence overtly states "US competitiveness == Big companies (and nothing else)" while painting the politicians as intensionally harmful
- The last one again presupposes the plan to fail, and now also for it to necessarily crush the "post-breakup pieces".
- There also seems to be a general sentiment that non-american must be bad for America.
And this are just the ones I spotted. The post doesn't justify any of those. In a verbal conversation, this would certainly harmful to the exchange of ideas and likely be used by people wanting to further their agenda by driving the other side into defending positions (if lucky with those facts included). I hope the effects in text are not as bad.
Embarrassment of riches. There's an attitude in America that being in the lead is just the default state because America has been a leader in tech for decades now. Meanwhile most international multinationals are jealously guarded and protected by their respective national governments and are seen by the respective populations as their national pride (e.g. VW in Germany)
A good example is the vilification of the Silicon Valley tech scene by local governments (looking at you San Francisco) while every other nation is desperately trying to recreate it within their own borders - because who doesn't want thousands of high-paying / high-tech jobs in their region? Or how Amazon had their new HQ driven out of New York by local activists and local 'progressive' politicians.
Embarrassment of riches indeed.
Well Trump or whoever is the president then can instate a national security emergency and kick out that foreign company. I know this sounds like a broken record but it looks like this is how trade works now.
You're also misunderstanding the effects and purpose of breaking up larger companies, which are: to restore and increase competitiveness.
As a very crude and not entirely accurate rule of thumb, large US corporations operate with a monopolistic mindset which is inherently developed-Western-going-on-global.
Competitive countries operate with a more explicitly nationalistic mindset which makes it harder for them to operate in the same market spaces in the same way. (Not impossible - just harder.)
And the language barrier will always be a problem.
So no - I don't expect non-US corporations to take over.
I do. Why not? It took a little over 2 decades to move the entire high-tech electronic supply chain to Asia, and now Apple couldn't manufacture iPhones in United States even if they wanted to. The problem is that at that scale, once inertia takes over, even if you see it coming there will be nothing you can do about it.