TikTok Deal: US Government Eyes Billions | News

• After talking to XI: Trump speaks of agreement to Tiktok, and Beijing negotiating with ‘base on market rules’
• Tiktok: Congressmen raise questions about Trump’s solution for selling the video application

According to sources familiar with the matter, heard by WSJ, investors would pay the fee to the government in exchange for negotiating the deal with China. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping talked about connection agreement on Friday, defining negotiation with ‘base on market rules’.

The final structure and payment amount have not yet been set, but the fee could reach billions of dollars, the sources told Wall Street Journal.

Last month, Intel agreed to give 10% shareholding to the country’s government, which became the company’s largest shareholder. In the same month, Trump closed an agreement with Nvidia and AMD, who agreed to pay 15% of chip sales revenue to the US government to ensure export licenses.

• Understand: He sold his face, and now an avatar of his with AI advertising supplements on Tiktok

Trump has adopted a series of measures to expand his influence on the private sector in his second term, which worries some Republicans, according to the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper recalls that US government has received a “golden action” in the acquisition of US Steel by Nippon Steel, which gives the president the power to approve strategic decisions of the company.

In the case of Tiktok, the newspaper points out that although Trump has already mentioned that the government could receive an amount as part of the agreement, the value of billions of dollars draws attention and can be considered a large amount for the function of just brokering a business.

Trump would have said last Friday at the Oval Hall that the size of the government agreement and effort would justify the “huge rate” directed to the United States.

The newspaper also points out that investment banks advising on typical operations receive rates of less than 1% of the transaction value, and the percentage usually decreases as business size increases. And, usually, the government does not receive companies payments for national security approvals or export licenses. There are even experts who consider something illegal.

Conversations held earlier this week between US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese deputy HE Lifeng in Madrid resulted in an agreement on what the structure to separate Tiktok operations in Bytedance would be to separate operations. The details of this agreement have not yet been released, and Trump suggested on Thursday that the final decision would fit the Chinese President.

• Privacy: Tiktok will warn parents when teenagers post content on the platform

Although the agreement on Tiktok has not yet been officially announced, according to the latest negotiations, there would be a model for the purchase of the US video application control, which foresees that Chinese bytedance holds a maximum of 20%, and the remaining percentage in the hands of an investor group, including Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz and Private Equity Silver Lake Management manager LLC, according to people along with the subject.

Trump said this week that the app would be “property of totally American investors” and “companies that love the United States,” but avoided answering a question about whether the app would require a new algorithm. In June, Trump even stated, in an interview with Fox, to have identified a buyer for Tiktok operations in the United States without providing details.

Tiktok is the property of Bytedance. A decision from Joe Biden’s government determined that the Chinese Internet giant should sell control of Tiktok operations in the United States or leave the country, and was given an ultimatum for the situation to be resolved. This deadline, however, has been renewed since the beginning of this year, already in the Trump administration. The last renewal would win this week, but the deadline was extended to until December 16.

Trump’s interest in using his diplomacy to gain an agreement on Tiktok was drowning up the national security concerns that supported the bipartisan law that had initially set the January period for alienation. The president signed several executive orders extending this period – although the legal basis is not fully clear to circumvent the law and allow the application to continue operating.

Trump was once a Tiktok critic, but he changed his view of the app, crediting him part of his advances among young voters in last year’s election.