Tiktok’s forced sale to Oracle halted as Biden reviews China policy
Tiktok’s sale of its US business to Oracle and Walmart has reportedly been put on ice as President Joe Biden reviews the Trump administration’s crackdown on Chinese firms.
The video platform had been forced into offloading its American unit by former president Trump, who argued user data could be shared with Beijing. Tiktok has always denied the allegations.
Tiktok, which is owned by Chinese tech giant Bytedance, has been in talks with Walmart and Oracle since September to finalise a complicated deal that would shift the app’s US assets into a new entity.
But the Wall Street Journal today reported that the sale process had been “shelved indefinitely” amid a wider policy review by Biden’s administration.
The deal has been hampered in recent months by a number of legal challenges, with many federal courts in the US blocking the Commerce Department’s attempts to shut down Tiktok in the US.
Discussions between Bytedance and US national security officials have been ongoing, according to the report.
A reversal of the sale order would come as a major filip to Tiktok, which has more than 100m users in the US.
The order formed part of Trump’s crackdown on Chinese tech firms over national security concerns — a policy that is now under review by Biden.
Huawei, which was one of the biggest targets of Trump’s anti-China campaign, has launched a legal challenge against the decision to label it a national security threat.
Founder Ren Zhengfei this week said he hoped the new administration would adopt “more open policies”.