The White House really wants to get a deal to sell Chinese short-video app TikTok to a US company and remove all possibilities of the Mainland using it as a way to spy on Americans.
Except, apparently, one Big Tech firm that Team Trump isn’t so keen on: Online retail giant Amazon, On The Money has learned
I know what you’re saying, hasn’t The Donald and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (the dude he used to call “Jeff Bozo” because he owns the Trump hating Washington Post) patched things up? Bezos was at the inaugural with his glamorous fiancee, Lauren Sanchez, and came bearing a $1 million gift. The WaPo is turning more Trumpy following Bezos’s management changes.
Best buds, right?
Maybe not. As Team Trump was putting the final touches both on its tariff plan, and its plan to save TikTok from a law that bans it from the US unless a domestic buyer appears before Saturday’s deadline, Amazon tried to do them a solid. It offered to pay what it takes to buy not just the app’s US operations (which is what this whole kerfuffle is all about) but the entire business from the Chinese, a deal some say could cost the online retailer as much as $200 billion.
Amazon has the money, mind you. As of the end of the year, it’s sitting on $100 billion-plus in cash and it can easily finance the rest. But at least for now, it doesn’t have support from the Trumpers, which it would need to get US regulatory approval.
“Half baked,” is how someone inside the deal machinations described the Amazon bid. “Why did they wait until the last minute?”
The way the dealmakers described the situation to On The Money, getting a sale of the US portion of TikTok was not easy. The White House has spent months trying to thread the needle. The main pitfall is that you have to comply with a US law that bans the app here if the Chinese don’t relinquish control.
The Chinese government is calling the shots, as it does when you’re dealing with China Inc. You have to convince the apparatchiks there to give up control — but not total ownership rights — to a majority-owned US investor group. President Xi & Co., have refused to sell TikTok’s key component, its algorithm that keeps people glued to the app by supplying an endless stream of videos based on user preferences.
The algo will be leased by the new company from the Chinese under the White House plan. And even with all these bells-and-whistles, it’s still not a given China will play ball.
Yes, all very complicated, and a structure that won’t be easily unwound by Amazon throwing money at the Chinese to buy its entire global operations, which TikTok’s parent, Bytedance, has said in the past that it doesn’t want to sell. In fact, under the White House deal, Bytedance will retain a minority stake in TikTok US as a further enhancement.
Meanwhile, you might ask yourself why we are here in the first place since Trump wanted to ban the app just a few years back? For all the concerns about TikTok being a covert Chinese spying operation (which it has long denied) and bipartisan support to ban its US app sans a sale to a domestic company, Trump thinks TikTok’s user base helped him win the election, so now he wants to save it.
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