Howard Schultz Has a Big China Problem

Possible presidential candidate Howard Schultz knows that Starbucks will succeed in China. The Chinese market for Starbucks “will be larger than the U.S. over time,” Schultz, then the company’s CEO, said in 2016. He then added, “There’s no doubt at some point China will exceed the U.S.”

And so, as of 2017, Starbucks was opening a store in China roughly every 15 hours. The 48-year-old company’s largest acquisition ever involved buying out its Chinese partner for $1.3 billion in July 2017, meaning Starbucks owns 100 percent of its stores there. Speaking in July 2018 at the world’s largest Starbucks — in Shanghai, of course — Schultz said, “I will say, unequivocally, that anyone who is betting against Starbucks in China is dead wrong.”