Maybe it's just an attempt to put pressure on China; maybe an agreement is actually imminent. In any case, US President Trump is already giving his "blessing" to a Tiktok deal with the participation of Oracle and postponing the announced download lock for the video platform.
US President Donald Trump has announced a possible acquisition of the US branch of the Chinese video platform Tiktok by the US companies Oracle and Walmart. "I think it's going to be a fantastic deal," Trump said on Saturday. "I've given my blessing to the deal. If you can do it, that's great; if you don't, that's okay too." At the same time, the US government postponed the planned download ban for the app to September 27th. The Ministry of Commerce announced that the decision was made "in view of the recent positive developments." Shortly before, Tiktok had confirmed that it was aiming for a deal with the US companies Oracle and Walmart.
A political dispute had broken out over the past few weeks over the Chinese online service. As a result, the US government announced that it would block the download of Tiktok and the Wechat messenger app, which is popular with Chinese-speaking users, via the Google and Apple app marketplaces. The US Department of Commerce justified this with dangers to "national security". Trump suspects Tiktok of espionage for China, which its Chinese parent company Bytedance rejects.
For the more than one hundred million Tiktok users in the US who have already installed the app, the ban would have meant that they could no longer download updates. You should be able to use the app itself until November 12th. The ban already applies to Wechat.
The grace period for Tiktok should enable the app to be sold to a US company. Corresponding negotiations with the US technology giant Microsoft initially did not lead to a result. After Microsoft withdrew from the bidding dispute, the software company Oracle had submitted an offer. The US software company announced that it would provide the cloud services for the newly designed Tiktok Global platform in the US. It will hold 12.5 percent of the new company.
At first it remained unclear to what extent China's approval is still required after Trump's "fundamental approval" of a deal with Oracle and Walmart. The Chinese government had previously torpedoed a direct sale of Tiktok's US business to the Microsoft software group. It introduced a new rule according to which software algorithms can only be sold abroad with the permission of the authorities.
Beijing branded the US government's actions against Tiktok on Friday as "harassment" and threatened countermeasures. On Saturday the Chinese government put in place a mechanism for punitive measures against foreign companies if they threaten the “national security” of the People's Republic. According to observers, the move is clearly aimed at US companies.
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