Trump has approved a deal which would allow TikTok to continue to operate in the United States. What happened?
Summary
The Trump administration has agreed to push back the ban on downloads of Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from app stores by one week in light of a new deal.
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The ban comes as the result of an executive order signed on 14 August which gave Chinese parent company ByteDance 90 days to sell TikTok to a US corporation or risk a total ban due to national security concerns.
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The new deal, approved by Trump last night, will create a new company called TikTok global in which the majority of stakeholders are US investors including Oracle and Walmart. It addresses security concerns by ensuring no backdoor access to Chinese corporations, which maintain some ownership.
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TikTok global will IPO in about a year and has already announced that $5 billion of the proceeds from the IPO will go towards an education fund.
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Sees Trump’s approval of the Oracle deal as a sign that he was never serious about banning TikTok in the first place, calling the executive order an empty threat.
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Frames Trump as authoritarian, saying that he forced a deal when it wasn’t truly necessary from a national security perspective.
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Reminds readers that the deal is still in its early stages and Trump has only approved the proposal “in concept,” and underscores previous gaffes like how Trump initially wanted companies to pay the US treasury in exchange for operating TikTok, but that this idea was illegal.
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Lauds Trump for approving a proposed deal that would bring 25,000 jobs to the United States.
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Lauds Trump for prioritizing the country’s national security interests above all else.
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Argues that Trump was not quick to approve just any deal, and went through the proposal with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that it met his stringent requirements.
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© Evelyn Torsher, 2020
