Re: Red-line
The trouble with setting up business in a totalitarian regime is that you're then hitching future business certainty to the political trajectory of that totalitarian regime. If it heads in a positive direction (less totalitarian, more towards a democracy and the true rule of law), you're helping it head in that direction by bringing some prosperity to the mix. However, if it starts heading in a negative direction, and you don't do anything about it, everyone is, as the saying goes, screwed (but starting with the letter F instead).
By the sounds of it, Samsung smelled the roses and decided the fragrance wasn't sufficiently sweet. 2019 is 6 years after Xi Jinping came to power. Coincidence?
I'd love to know for sure the reasoning behind all this. I suspect that Samsung, being a Korean megacorp, has strong links into the South Korean government. Their gov's opinions on foreign policy like carry quite a lot of weight in Samsung's board.
Whereas it feels that, in the USA, companies (at least, some companies, like a lot of the tech companies), would rather say "screw you" than pay any attention to suggestions and policies from their own government, especially if paying attention threatens to cost them a bit of short term money. If the US gov has been saying "er, you may want to think again being so dependent on China", and they've been ignored; well that could come back to hurt a lot of people, not just the companies.
I think one of the problems US companies have is that they fundamentally assume US global dominance is unbounded, and permanent, and that they, who help pay for it don't pay their taxes like they might, can depend on US foreign policy successfully supporting their business indefinitely. It's, "The USA is too big for it to happen to us" syndrome. The trouble is that if they all assume that and act accordingly, they're just making it more likely that it won't be true.
And of course, this goes back to the age old tradition in the USA of not trusting their own government who they've elected. Well, guess what happens when you don't trust your own government, that you have elected? You'll end up ignoring what, at least sometimes, is probably very sound advice. Like, don't eat washing machine tablets, or, vaccinations are good for you...
This is a reason to truly loath conspiracy theorists, and especially politicians who seek to profit by perpetuating myths. Politicians voting based on their religious beliefs alone are in particular not dividing the business of government from religion. It's all very well to say that it doesn't really matter, and that there are no consequences, but it all adds up to a really, really nasty end result.