At least by a little. As part of the People’s Republic of China’s economic war that it’s waging against us, they have moved to block important mergers involving American and non-PRC companies and today are threatening our major tech companies (and by extension our smaller tech companies and those companies that supply or otherwise do business with these).

Beijing has already said it is investigating Nvidia and Google over alleged antitrust issues. Other American companies in its sights include Apple, Silicon Valley tech company Broadcom, and semiconductor-design software vendor Synopsys, said people familiar with the matter. Synopsys has a $35 billion acquisition awaiting approval by Beijing.

And

[The PRC] said it had opened an antitrust probe against Google.

And

In 2018, amid US-China trade conflicts in the first Trump administration, Qualcomm terminated its proposed purchase of Dutch chip maker NXP Semiconductors after failing to obtain clearance from China.

And

US chip maker Broadcom’s takeover of VMware, valued at $61 billion when it was unveiled in May 2022, was in peril until a meeting between Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in November 2023.

If these companies did no business with companies domiciled in the PRC and did no business within the PRC, that nation would be unable to go after them at all, including having no ability to block mergers between US and non-PRC companies. The PRC’s ability to damage our economy would be restricted commensurately. Of course, withdrawing from the PRC would be expensive in the short run, but it’s a large economic world, and while the PRC is a major player in it, that nation is not the only player. The magnitude of its role, too, would shrink as we reduce our economic ties with it.

Another, central, question is this: what’s the cost of letting an enemy nation have so much influence over our economy?