Error signal

Normally this isn’t my department, but it’s moving into one of my categories.

Banning Tiktok was ALLEGEDLY meant to punish China for being one of the 500 countries we hate, but without actually punishing China for being our entire economy.

The important fact is that Tiktok was China’s first mass-market BRAND. Before this, China was happy to stay behind the scenes, being our factory for all products while our WallStreet monsters pretended to “manufacture” the stuff they really offshored. (I don’t have a problem with ‘store brand’ relabeling as long as the anonymous maker is IN THIS COUNTRY.)

There were a few niche exceptions like Lenovo, but China hadn’t tried to create a new generic name like Ford or Xerox or Scotch Tape. Tiktok became generic, with its own verb. For the first time it posed a real threat to the WallStreeters who liked to maintain fake brands while slaughtering our factories and workers.

Here’s the key: After the ban looked inevitable, American tiktokers DIDN’T migrate to Twitter or Facebook or Substack, despite Substack’s brazen bribery. Instead, they’re migrating to ANOTHER CHINESE BRAND, Rednote.

Exact parallel to Toyota. When Toyota broke into our car market with SUPERIOR PRODUCTS, Detroit started losing customers. They tried to compete with Vega and Pinto, but both were crap in different ways. Vega wasn’t even an automobile, Pinto was solid but unsatisfying. Nobody switched from Toyota to Vega. Instead the Toyota buyers spread out to Datsun.

Finally around 1990 Detroit picked up the signal and figured out AGAIN how to achieve both quality and satisfaction. Detroit knew how before 1958, and Toyota had learned its methods from pre-WallStreet US industries.

When banning one foreign brand forces customers to ANOTHER foreign brand, the US NON-COMPETITORS should receive a loud and clear ERROR SIGNAL. We’re already in the ditch, so it’s too late to steer out of the skid. We need a tow and repair job first.