TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance offers to divest operation as Trump nears US ban order
- Trump threatens to ban the popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app from operating in the United States
- TikTok has been a source of US national security and censorship concerns
China’s ByteDance has agreed to divest the US operations of TikTok completely in a bid to save a deal with the White House, after President Donald Trump said on Friday he had decided to ban the popular short-video app, two people familiar with the matter said on Saturday.
US officials have said TikTok under its Chinese parent poses a national risk because of the personal data it handles. ByteDance’s concession will test whether Trump’s threat to ban TikTok is a negotiating tactic or whether he is intent on cracking down on a social media app that has up to 80 million daily active users in the United States.
Trump told reporters on-board Air Force One late on Friday that he would issue an order for TikTok to be banned in the United States as early as Saturday. “Not the deal that you have been hearing about, that they are going to buy and sell … We are not an M&A (mergers and acquisitions) country,” Trump said.
ByteDance was previously seeking to keep a minority stake in the US business of TikTok, which the White House had rejected. Under the new proposed deal, ByteDance would exit completely and Microsoft Corp would take over TikTok in the United States, the sources said.
Some ByteDance investors that are based in the United States may be given the opportunity to take minority stakes in the business, the sources added. About 70 per cent of ByteDance’s outside investors come from the United States.