The Ukraine story is one of extortion and bribery: Trump threatened a vulnerable nation by withholding aid, using the threat to extract help against his domestic rivals. What's not being widely noted is that the same thing is happening to U.S. corporations 1/
Even as the impeachment hearings were going on, Trump made a bizarre appearance at an Apple plant, making a series of false claims about both Apple and his own policies. And Tim Cook just stood by silently 2/ nytimes.com/2019/11/20/us/…
Why the acquiescence? Trump's tariffs aren't being applied uniformly; there have been many "exclusions" based purely on the administration's judgment. Apple wants some of those 3/ nytimes.com/2019/11/20/bus…
If you don't think political support for Trump is crucial for getting tariff relief, I have a degree from Trump University you might want to buy. In fact, Chad Bown, the go-to guy on the trade war, warned about this months ago 4/ theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… 
And does anyone really believe that it's just trade policy? Amazon may not be able to prove that it was denied a Pentagon contract because Trump hates the Washington Post, but does anyone really believe that the process was squeaky clean? 5/ washingtonpost.com/technology/201…
It's hard to feel sorry for big corporations, but they aren't the real victims here. The Ukrainification of corporate America is yet another front in the assault on democracy 6/
