Tech giants from Tencent Holdings (OTC:TCEHY) and Alibaba (NYSE:BABA) hit the plunge pool after U.S. regulators rekindled threats to toss China's most prominent corporations off U.S. bourses, compounding concerns of a widening domestic antitrust crackdown.
As the street realizes that any lingering hope of a reset in US-China trade relations is unwarranted, technology angst might continue to ooze from this uncooperative melding of technology policy minds.
Indeed, this is a worrying proposition as the two economic behemoths draw battlegrounds, setting the stage for a real dust-up as the superpowers shift from vying for supply chain domination to battling it out for global internet technology supremacy.
Buckle) in for this one as it could make the Trump-era Trade War legacy look like little more than an Axis and Allies board game.
In the U.S., the monopolistic tendencies of large corporations will soon face the regulatory piper. And in China, internet/anti-monopoly news flow isn't helping.
The noise is increasing, but there's not a lot of 'new news' here. But this isn't going away either—the steady drumbeat of online media regulation the last five years makes that clear—and the process of regulation catching up to innovation is painful everywhere it happens.
However, suppose you're a policymaker that just set your stall out that you want to drive up R&D, boost online sales penetration significantly off an already high base, and see consumption grow as a proportion of the economy. In that case, you're going to need the major internet names in China along for the ride.
It's a real dilemma where this thing will end up.