Trump Says Oracle, Walmart to have total control of TikTok or US will not approve deal

Oracle and Walmart will need to have "total control" over the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok in order for the United States to approve a deal between the company and its two US partners, President Donald Trump said on Monday.

Washington [US], September 21 (ANI/Sputnik): Oracle and Walmart will need to have "total control" over the Chinese video-sharing app TikTok in order for the United States to approve a deal between the company and its two US partners, President Donald Trump said on Monday. "They are going to have total control over it," Trump told Fox News in an interview. "If we find that they do not have total control, then we are not going (to) approve the deal."

The US TikTok saga has accelerated since August after Trump threatened to ban the app in the United States, citing wider concerns about alleged Chinese government spying on data of Americans using China-originated social media. Trump's ban of TikTok was originally to take effect on September 20, with his administration offering the app's founding company, Bytedance, one way out: Sell to a US entity. Several American interests cropped up then for talks with TikTok, with early Walmart and Oracle appearing to have crossed the finish line for a deal.

CNBC, however, quoted ByteDance as saying it would own a majority stake in the new US entity to be called TikTok Global. The statement, in Mandarin language, insisted the company was not losing control of the social media app, CNBC said. The report also said that as part of the deal, Oracle, Walmart and ByteDance agreed to list TikTok Global on an American stock exchange within 12 months, adding that a small round of pre-IPO, or initial public offering, financing will give ByteDance an 80 percent stake in the new entity.

Trump, when asked about this on the Fox News segment, said ByteDance will at best have a minority stake in the restructured TikTok. Even after going public, "it's all going to be run by Walmart and 100 percent Oracle," he said.

The president also said that his Democrat rivals in the US Congress complained that TikTok was being treated unconstitutionally "but it's going to bring 25,000 jobs and it's going to be based in Texas. They are moving it (the company) into our country. There can be zero security risk." TikTok filed a lawsuit in a US court last month to defend itself against any blockage of its US operations. It said the Trump administration's action was without any prior outreach to the company that gave it a chance to respond to the accusations, violating the US Constitution and the firm's right to due process.

It also countered the administration's attempts to paint it as a "Chinese company" when it already had "more than 1,500 employees across the US pour their hearts into building this platform every day, with 10,000 more jobs planned in California, Texas, New York, Tennessee, Florida, Michigan, Illinois, and Washington State". (ANI/Sputnik)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)