Trump open to Elon Musk, Larry Ellison purchasing TikTok: Bloomberg

WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said he would be open to billionaire supporter Elon Musk or Oracle-Corp Chairman Larry Ellison purchasing social video app TikTok as part of a joint venture with the US government.

“I have the right to make a deal,” he said at an event alongside Ellison at the White House on Tuesday. “So what I am thinking about saying to somebody is buy it and give half to the United States of America, and we’ll give you the permit, and they’ll have a great partner.”

While TikTok temporarily went offline over the weekend, Trump signed an executive order on January 20 – his first day in office- to extend the deadline for a sale by 75 days. While it’s not clear that Trump has the authority to extend the deadline, it may not ultimately matter.

ByteDance Limited has publically refused to sell TikTok though prospective buyers hope the Supreme Court’s ruling in support of a national security law forcing the company to either sell or shutter the service in the US, along with the temporary shutdown, could push it to reconsider.

“You have an asset that has no value or has a trillion-dollar value,” Trump said. “It all depends on whether or not the United States give the permit.”

China’s foreign and commerce ministries didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on whether Beijing would allow the American government to own part of TikTok. Its Foreign Ministry on Monday said that it is up to individual companies to make decisions about their operations and acquisitions, and the hope was that “the US can listen to rational voices and provide an open, fair, just and non-discriminatory environment.”

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While Beijing sees space for negotiating who buys a stake in the video-sharing app, it is ‘unlikely’ to accept a deal driven by politics, according to Zhu Feng, executive dean of Nanjing University’s School of International Studies. “The pursuits of US interests should be based on rules, not on the strength of the US government,” he added.

Potential Buyers

Potential bidders are already lining up. A group of American investors assembled by tech entrepreneurs Jesse Tinsley that included MrBeast, the internet’s most followed and highest earning content creator, announced a bid earlier Tuesday.

Billionaire Frank McCourt, former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary made a formal offer to buy TikTok earlier this month. O’Leary has already met Trump at Mr-a-Lago to discuss the bid, and McCourt has made clear he’d be happy to buy TikTok without the service’s coveted content algorithm, which ByteDance and China’s government have said it is not for sale.

“We’re not conflicted in anyway and we have the cash,” O’Leary told Bloomberg in an interview. His bid of $20 billion is derived from a rough calculation based on TikTok’s US operations as a share o fByteDance’s overall value, he said. Dispensing with the algorithm also makes it a much cleaner proposition, satisfying people concerned about Chinese ‘spyware’ embedded within, he added.

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Unlike Musk, who may face antitrust concerns as he already owns X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, O’Leary’s group has no complications that could slow or prevent a deal. “I think we could close it in 90 days,” the Shark Tank star said.

Amazon.com Inc. and Oracle, both of which already do business with TikTok have also been floated as possible suitors. After assurances from Trump that he wouldn’t enforce the law, Oracle notably helped restore TikTok’s app on Sunday after a roughly 14-hour US shutdown even though it could face fines for doing so.