US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he might offer to reduce tariffs on China to get Beijing’s approval for the sale of popular social media platform TikTok.
“Maybe I give them a little reduction in tariffs or something to get it done,” he told reporters at the White House.
Trump earlier this month said the US was in talks with four groups interested in acquiring TikTok, with the app facing an uncertain future in the country.
Photo: REUTERS
A US law has ordered TikTok to divest from its Chinese owner ByteDance or be banned in the US, enacted over concerns that Beijing could exploit the video-sharing platform to spy on Americans or covertly influence US public opinion.
The law took effect on Jan. 19, a day before Trump’s inauguration, but he quickly announced a delay to the law which has allowed it to continue to operate.
That delay is set to expire on April 5.
“We’re going to have a form of a deal,” Trump said, adding that if it was not done in time, he would extend the deadline.
“China is going to have to play a role in that, possibly in the form of an approval and I think they’ll do that,” he said.
In January, TikTok temporarily shut down in the US and disappeared from app stores as the deadline for the law approached, to the dismay of millions of users.
Trump suspended its implementation for two-and-a-half months after beginning his second term on Jan. 20, seeking a solution with Beijing.
TikTok subsequently restored service in the US, and returned to the Apple and Google app stores last month.
Artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Perplexity recently expressed interest in buying TikTok.
Perplexity in a blog post laid out a vision for integrating its AI-powered Internet search capabilities with the popular video-snippet-sharing app.
“Combining Perplexity’s answer engine with TikTok’s extensive video library would allow us to build the best search experience in the world,” the San Francisco-based firm said.
Potential buyers include an initiative called “The People’s Bid for TikTok,” launched by real estate and sports tycoon Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative.
Others in the running are Microsoft, Oracle and a group that includes Internet personality MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson.
“Any acquisition by a consortium of investors could in effect keep ByteDance in control of the algorithm, while any acquisition by a competitor would likely create a monopoly in the short form video and information space,” Perplexity said in the post.
“All of society benefits when content feeds are liberated from the manipulations of foreign governments and globalist monopolists,” it added.
A French-Algerian man went on trial in France on Monday for burning to death his wife in 2021, a case that shocked the public and sparked heavy criticism of police for failing to take adequate measures to protect her. Mounir Boutaa, now 48, stalked his Algerian-born wife Chahinez Daoud following their separation, and even bought a van he parked outside her house near Bordeaux in southwestern France, which he used to watch her without being detected. On May 4, 2021, he attacked her in the street, shot her in both legs, poured gasoline on her and set her on fire. A neighbor hearing
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
RSS