They don’t care about fairness, they care about profit (or rather, they care about how much their share value would drop if they sacrificed a given source of profit.) If the American stock market would punish an American [public] corporation for reneging on being a lapdog to China, then said American corporation is basically constitutionally incapable of leaving China (if it’s structured in the usual way with a board whose positions are controlled by shareholder election.) And right now, it seems that China is the only market that traders see as large enough to make them short the stock when you do anything to mess with it.

Private corporations, public corporations that are still founder-controlled, and “public-benefit” corporations might be immune to this effect, but your average traded C-Corp or S-Corp won’t be.

> If the American stock market would punish an American [public] corporation for reneging on being a lapdog to China

If.

I completely agree that this sets a bad precedent. I don't think CBS is in the right here. But as long as these companies have financial interests in abandoning values that we've come to rely on in the US, this is going to keep happening.