US President Donald Trump on Monday repeatedly insisted that any sale of TikTok’s US operations would have to include a substantial payment to the US — but it was not clear under what authority he could extract a payout.
It would be unprecedented, based on recent history, for the US government to collect a cut of a transaction involving companies in which it does not hold a stake.
Trump said that the money would come from China or a US buyer such as Microsoft Corp.
Photo: Bloomberg
“The United States should get a very large percentage of that price, because we’re making it possible,” Trump told reporters at a news conference on Monday evening.
“Whatever the number is, it would come from the sale, which nobody else would be thinking out but me, but that’s the way I think, and I think it’s very fair,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Trump said that TikTok would have to close in the US by Sept. 15 — unless there is a deal to sell the social network’s domestic operations to Microsoft or another US company.
Microsoft said in a blog post that it was aiming to complete a deal for TikTok’s operations in the US, as well as in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, no later than Sept. 15.
The White House had insisted upon that deadline, people familiar with the matter said.
It could prove an uphill climb, with key details for the deal — including price — still not worked out, people familiar with the discussions said.
Microsoft said in a blog post that it is committed to “providing proper economic benefits to the United States, including the United States Treasury.”
That language referred to tax revenue and job creation, a person familiar with the matter said, rather than some sort of special transaction fee.
Trump compared the arrangement with landlord-tenant dynamics.
“Without the lease, the tenant doesn’t have the value,” he said. “Well, we’re sort of in a certain way the lease. We make it possible to have this great success.”
The US assesses fees associated with deals under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), which investigates overseas acquisitions of US businesses, but those charges — set on a sliding scale and going no higher than US$300,000 — did not fit what Trump described.
CFIUS has been reviewing ByteDance Ltd’s (字節跳動) 2017 purchase of the lip-synching app Musical.ly that was later folded into TikTok.
The White House has said it is concerned that ByteDance could be compelled to hand over US users’ data to Beijing or use the app to influence the country’s population of 165 million, and the more than 2 billion users globally who have downloaded it.
Meanwhile, the Chinese government would not accept an acquisition of TikTok’s US operations by Microsoft and might take action against Washington if a sale is forced, the Beijing-backed China Daily said in its editorial yesterday.
It is Beijing’s strongest defense so far of ByteDance and its viral video phenom. That process is tantamount to officially sanctioned theft, the newspaper wrote, echoing prominent Beijing-backed media such as the Global Times.
“China will by no means accept the ‘theft’ of a Chinese technology company, and it has plenty of ways to respond if the administration carries out its planned smash and grab,” it said, without specifying options.
“With competitiveness now dependent on the ability to collect and use data, it offers an either-or choice of submission or mortal combat in the tech realm,” the newspaper added.
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