TARIFF TURMOIL
Trump said in April that China would have agreed to a deal on the sale of TikTok if it were not for a dispute over his tariffs on Beijing.
ByteDance has confirmed talks with the US government, saying key matters needed to be resolved and that any deal would be “subject to approval under Chinese law”.
Possible solutions reportedly include seeing existing US investors in ByteDance roll over their stakes into a new independent global TikTok company.
Additional US investors, including Oracle and private equity firm Blackstone, would be brought on to reduce ByteDance’s share in the new TikTok.
Much of TikTok’s US activity is already housed on Oracle servers, and the company’s chairman, Larry Ellison, is a longtime Trump ally.
Uncertainty remains, particularly over what would happen to TikTok’s valuable algorithm.
“TikTok without its algorithm is like Harry Potter without his wand – it’s simply not as powerful,” said Forrester Principal Analyst Kelsey Chickering.
Meanwhile, it appears TikTok is continuing with business as usual.
TikTok on Monday introduced a new “Symphony” suite of generative artificial intelligence tools for advertisers to turn words or photos into video snippets for the platform.
