Trump: US should get 'significant part' of TikTok sale price

Home >> WASHINGTON (Reuters) - US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the US government should have a 'substantial part' of the selling price of US activities of popular short video app TikTok and warned that he will ban the service in the United States without sales on September 15.

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FILE PHOTO: Flags of China and the US can be seen near a TikTok logo in this illustration, created on July 16, 2020. REUTERS / Florence Lo

The turnaround came after Trump said on Friday that he intended to conduct US Chinese video app to be banned as soon as possible after Saturday after declining a potential sale to Microsoft.

Reuters reported last week that some investors value TikTok at around $ 50 billion, citing people familiar with the matter.

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"I did say that if you buy it, whatever the price goes to the owner, because I think it's essentially China ... I said a very substantial part of that price in the treasury of the United States must be because we allow this deal to go through, "Trump said.

Trump later defended his pursuit of austerity, adding,

"no one else would think of me but me, but I think so."

Nicholas Klein, a lawyer at DLA Piper, said generally "the government does not have the power to close a private deal through" the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS), the interagency committee that evaluates some foreign investments in the United States.

It was not clear how the US government would receive part of the purchase price.

He added that "it will close on September 15 unless Microsoft or someone else can buy it and make a deal, an appropriate deal, so that the Treasury ... of the United States gets a lot of money."

TikTok said Monday

that it is "committed to making families happy and providing meaningful careers to those who create on our platform while we build TikTok for the long term. TikTok will be around for many years to come."

Daniel Elman, analyst at Nucleus Research , said a sale "could foreshadow a growing wave of US corporate takeovers of Chinese Internet objects, especially if geopolitical tensions continue to rise."

Elman said this could impact Tencent's WeChat.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo referred Sunday to WeChat and said Trump will "take action in the coming days on a wide range of national security threats posed by software associated with the Chinese Communist Party."

US officials have said TikTok poses a national risk because of the personal information that are processed with it. TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer said in a blog post last week da t the company was committed to following U.S. laws and allowing experts to follow moderation policies and investigate the code that powers the algorithms.

Trump's comments on Sunday confirmed a report by Reuters that he had agreed to give China's ByteDance 45 days to negotiate a sale of TikTok to Microsoft.

LANDLORD TENANT RELATIONSHIP

Trump, a former New York real estate developer, compared TikTok to the landlord-tenant relationship, suggesting that TikTok is like a tenant. "Without a lease, the tenant has nothing - so they either pay the so-called key money or they pay something."

He said he didn't care "whether it's Microsoft or someone else - a big company, a safe company, a very, very American company is buying it."

Microsoft said on Sunday that CEO Satya Nadella had spoken to Trump and "is willing to continue discussions to investigate a purchase of TikTok in the United States."

Microsoft said on Sunday that it is "committed to acquiring TikTok subject to a full security assessment and providing the appropriate economic benefits to the United States, including the US Treasury."

Many prominent Republicans, including House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, have made statements in support of Microsoft's acquisition of TikTok's US operations. Some congressmen are concerned about younger voters' opposition to the party if Trump has banned TikTok, which has 100 million US users.

Microsoft and TikTok's mother, ByteDance, have notified the U.S. government of a preliminary proposal for Microsoft to purchase the TikTok service in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

US Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer also supported the sale, while a senior White House advisor expressed concern about a sale to Microsoft.

"An American company must purchase TikTok so that everyone can continue to use it and your data is safe," Schumer said on Twitter, adding, "This is about privacy. With TikTok in China, it is subject to the laws of the Chinese Communist Party who may require data to be transferred to their government. "

White House trade advisor Peter Navarro suggested on Monday that Microsoft could divest its holdings in China if it purchases TikTok.

"So the question is, is Microsoft going to be compromised?" Navarro said in an interview with CNN. "Maybe Microsoft can divest its Chinese interests?"

Navarro said the Chinese government and the military use Microsoft software "to do all the things they do."

Reporting by David Shepardson, Doina Chiacu, Susan Heavey, Alexandra Alper, Echo Wang, Greg Roumeliotis, Paresh Dave and Pete Schroeder; Edited by Nick Zieminski, Lisa Shumaker and Aurora Ellis

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.