Trump demands US Treasury cut of Tiktok sale
US President Donald Trump has said the US Treasury should be brought in on Microsoft’s potential acquisition of Tiktok’s American arm, arguing the deal wouldn’t happen without its approval.
Trump said he told Microsoft the government should receive a “substantial portion” of the deal if an American firm buys the operation.
Tiktok’s Chinese owner Bytedance is in talks with Microsoft to offload the US wing of the short-form video app, along with its operations in Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
Trump has given the pair until 15 September to seal the deal. The President had previously said he wanted to ban Tiktok and would not allow the Microsoft deal to go ahead, but later changed his mind after speaking to the software giant’s boss Satya Nadella over the weekend.
“The United States should get a very large percentage of that price, because we’re making it possible,” Trump said.
“It would come from the sale, which nobody else would be thinking about but me, but that’s the way I think, and I think it’s very fair.”
Nicholas Klein, a lawyer at DLA Piper, said generally “the government doesn’t have the authority to take a cut of a private deal through” the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is the interagency committee that reviews some foreign investments in the US.
Trump has said he will continue the process of banning Tiktok if a deal cannot be reached, as the administration cracks down on Chinese-owned companies over security fears.
Chinese state media today likened the possible Tiktok deal to “theft”, warning that Beijing has “plenty of ways to respond if the [US] administration carries out its planned smash and grab”.
The ramp up in rhetoric from the Republican leader comes ahead of the 2020 US presidential election in November, which Trump called to delay last week over concerns of voter fraud.
He does not have the legal power to order a delay, nor is there any evidence to suggest mail-in voting leads to fraudulent ballots.
“President Trump has an election to contest in November, and he needs a bogeyman to blame, so it looks like China will be used as a political punching bag,” said David Madden, market analyst at CMC Markets.
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo said yesterday he expects Trump to take action on companies such as Tiktok which allegedly share data with the Chinese government “in the coming days”.
A White House spokesman added: “The administration has very serious national security concerns over Tiktok. We continue to evaluate future policy.”