Trump’s anti-China ‘posturing’ puts TikTok-Oracle deal in limbo, analysts say

Name: Oracle reaches deal to become TikTok’s ‘technology partner’, after Microsoft offer is rejected
Uploaded: 2020-09-17T11:15:09.000Z
Duration: 1 min 46 s
Description: Oracle reaches deal to become TikTok’s ‘technology partner’, after Microsoft offer is rejected

While Trump wanted an outright sale of TikTok’s US business, Oracle agreed to become a ‘trusted technology provider’ and let ByteDance keep majority ownership

The stakes are high for the Trump administration because of the potential impact TikTok’s mostly young user base could have on the US presidential election in November

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The Trump administration’s hardline stance against China imperils TikTok owner ByteDance’s efforts to strike a deal with Oracle Corp and keep its short video-sharing service operating in the US. Photo: ZUMA Wire/DPA

Tracy QuandCoco Feng

Published: 7:15pm, 17 Sep 2020Updated: 4:09pm, 15 Oct 2020

Political posturing by the Trump administration, according to analysts, adds uncertainty on whether a deal between TikTok and Oracle Corp, which would prevent the short video-sharing service from being banned in the US, will be approved by Washington before a September 20 deadline.

The deal may be in limbo after US President Donald Trump said at a press conference on Wednesday that he did not like Oracle’s bid for an alliance with ByteDance-owned TikTok. His comments came after the multi-agency panel reviewing the deal found that its structure did not resolve national security concerns over TikTok’s US operations, although Trump said he was unaware of the ruling.

“I don‘t think we can ignore the broader context in which this is happening, which is continuing to want to look tough on China,” said Justin Sherman, non-resident fellow for cyber statecraft initiative at Washington-based think tank the Atlantic Council. “Pretty much everything the president has done and does on foreign policy is politically driven. It’s about ‘political posturing, looking tough, securing good deals’.”

Unlike the outright sale of TikTok’s US business that Trump wanted under an executive order he signed last month, the deal would make Oracle a “trusted technology provider”, the US tech company confirmed on Monday. Oracle would take over management of TikTok’s user data in the US, according to a Reuters report.

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Oracle reaches deal to become TikTok’s ‘technology partner’, after Microsoft offer is rejected

Some Republican lawmakers have already urged the Trump administration to reject the proposed TikTok-Oracle deal. In a tweet on Tuesday, Senator Josh Hawley from the state of Missouri wrote that “an ongoing ‘partnership’ that allows anything than a full emancipation of the TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Party control is completely unacceptable, and flatly inconsistent with the President’s Executive Order of August 6”.

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