Trump allies reportedly poised to buy TikTok

What happened

President Donald Trump yesterday said his administration and Beijing have a “deal on TikTok,” and he gave the social media juggernaut a fourth 90-day reprieve from a law banning it from the U.S. as long as it remains under Chinese ownership. He declined to name any of the “very big companies that want to buy it,” but The Wall Street Journal said a U.S. version of TikTok “would be controlled by an investor consortium including Oracle, Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz.”

Who said what

Under the framework deal, U.S. companies would own about 80% of the new company, while China’s ByteDance would keep just under 20%, the Journal said. U.S. TikTok would have an “American-dominated board with one member designated by the U.S. government,” and it would recreate TikTok’s content-serving algorithm using technology licensed from ByteDance. 

That structure would probably solve concerns about Chinese influence on 170 million U.S. TikTok users, Georgetown law professor Anupam Chander told The New York Times. But “it raises the risk of American propaganda by shifting the ownership of this speech platform to American companies who perhaps have a close relationship with the sitting president.” Notably, Oracle chairman and “Trump ally” Larry Ellison — whose family also controls CBS’s parent company and is trying to acquire CNN — would be a “key owner of one of the most prominent social media platforms in the world,” Gizmodo said. Other Trump-linked billionaires poised to have a big stake include Marc Andreessen and Jeff Yass.

What next?

Trump said he would “confirm everything” with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday. Barring congressional intervention, the deal was “expected to close in the next 30 to 45 days,” CNBC said. A White House official said any details not announced by the administration are “pure speculation.”

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