Sunday’s finale of “Game of Thrones” broke records and became the single most viewed show in cable television history with just shy of 20 million viewers.
But the United States is only a small fraction of the worldwide appeal of “Game of Thrones” despite that it takes place in a fantasy European world with British accents, it’s also produced by HBO, which is an American company.
And “Game of Thrones” fans in China were frozen out of the finale because of the United States.
The United States and China are in a trade tariff right now and it looks like it’s just beginning.
Under former President Obama, other countries including our allies, took advantage of the United States in a globalist perspective point of view. Why wouldn’t other countries try to capitalize in their favor on the richest country in the world?
But then President Trump came along and essentially said, “no, no, no, this is a terrible deal.” That’s why he’s gotten rid of the Iran Nuclear deal, the Paris Accord, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. They were all terrible deals where the U.S. went above and beyond the call of duty with putting more than enough of U.S. taxpayers’ money into global issues.
Back in 2016 when he was hitting the pavement on the campaign trail, then-Republican nominee Donald Trump said, “I have been talking about China for many years. And you know what? Nobody listened. But they are listening now.”
And he held to that promise. In recent weeks, President Trump ramped up his percent on tariffs imposed on China.
The United States just imposed 25-percent on tariffs – import taxes that studies have found are paid by American firms – on $250 billion worth of Chinese imports. Trump also threatened to raise tariffs on the remaining $300 billion worth of imports.
Trump wants to point out how unfair the tariff system is and he’s doing a phenomenal job of it, albeit, tensions between China and the United States have escalated in the last week.
So what does that have to do with HBO’s “Game of Thrones?”
The series finale streamed around the world on Sunday night except for China.
Chinese users logged on to Tencent Video to access the finale episode only to discover they couldn’t access the most recent episode. A message that read “transmission medium problems” appeared in lieu of the finale.
An HBO spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal the network had no issue with transmitting the episode, but Tencent was restricted from airing it by the Chinese government because of ongoing trade disputes.
On top of Game of Thrones’ finale not streaming, this weekend also saw Google pull Huawei’s Android license in response to an order from the US Commerce Department. The department names a number of companies that must secure American government approval to buy technology from US brands, which is why Chinese people weren’t allowed to enjoy the season finale.
Worldwide fans rushed to social media to express their distaste for the finale and almost nobody seemed to be happy about it.