You're not simply not engaging. You're also trying to prevent others from engaging, where the justification is that you want to prevent others from engaging because of uneven competitive costs.
The extension of that principle is that we should ban anyone from Iceland because they have nearly free electricity and so it's unfair that they can run data centers cheaper that US based ones. Or any country with welfare that enables them to hire for cheaper, since that is a direct gov subsidy.
We typically focus on consumers from a market competition regulation perspective because that is where price matters. Anyone that can't compete simply can't. If TikTok raises prices, it means someone can move in and undercut them, so there is incentive to keep prices low. We don't want to limit competition because it leads to worse outcomes. Look at the Jones act or the Chicken Tax as examples.
Electricity... No because that's a market commodity (presumably). Gov subsidy? Yes we should impose a tariff on that. Same with slave labor or other non market inputs.
Either way, substantially different than government owned.
> You're also trying to prevent others from engaging, where the justification is that you want to prevent others from engaging because of uneven competitive costs.
Well... Yeah. Others cannot engage with the CCP as legal equals in the United States or anywhere else. Allowing them to do so creates unfair, non free markets.
Communist-supported companies do not violate free market definitions. After all, people still get to decide whether they will trade with them.
> TikTok isn't a mysterious product. People know what they're getting and what they're giving to get it. Stop removing agency from folks and realize that TikTok would disappear tomorrow if a better product hit the market.
In the same way that no American has a 'right' to buy products produced by slave labor, I contend that Americans have no right to buy products produced by government controlled corporations. The free market is for private players on a similar playing field. Unless we let all corporations have militaries and declare sovereignty, I don't believe there's any right to do business with communists.
As a free-market enthusiast and a light libertarian, the non-agression principle applies equally to foreign governments as my own. Since I cannot vote out the communists, I can simply choose to not engage. At some point libertarians and free-marketers need to stop being selective as to which entities their principles get applied to. It's not a good look