Trump's 'Wealthy' TikTok Buyer Is Same Group Behind A Previous Stalled Bid
Trump said in an interview aired on Sunday that he had identified a contender to purchase the popular social media app from its Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd. but stopped short of naming the winning bidder. He also said that completion of any sale would be contingent on the Chinese government, including President Xi Jinping, dropping its longstanding opposition.
"We have a buyer for TikTok, by the way. I think I'll need probably China approval and I think President Xi will probably do it," Trump said in a pretaped interview with Fox News's Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. "It's a group of very wealthy people."
A person familiar with the discussions confirmed that the buyers group cited by the president was the one involving Oracle and Blackstone that had come close to reaching agreement with ByteDance in April but was halted when China withheld its approval following the US president's decision to impose sweeping tariffs.
That potential agreement would have granted new outside investors 50% of TikTok's US business in a unit that would be spun off from ByteDance. ByteDance's existing US investors would also own about 30% of the business, cutting the Chinese firm's stake to just below 20% and allowing it to meet the ownership requirements of the US security law. Oracle would take a minority stake in the operations and provide security assurances for user data.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that discussions were continuing "at the highest level" with China. "We have another 90-day extension, and it's just to continue to work out this deal and make sure that TikTok stays on for the American people," she told reporters. Blackstone declined to comment, while representatives from Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, ByteDance and TikTok didn't respond to requests for comment.
Trump addressed the fate of the video-sharing platform days after the US and China signed an agreement to ease trade tensions that had flared since he imposed tariffs of as much as 145% on Chinese imports. Under the accord finalized last week, the US dropped those tariffs to 30% and promised to resume shipments of ethane, jet engines and chip-design software as long as China honored a pledge to remove some barriers on rare earths exports.
That deal, though, left unanswered whether China might drop its objections to a sale of TikTok by ByteDance. When asked about the buyers mentioned by Trump, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told reporters at a regular press briefing in Beijing earlier Monday that on TikTok-related issues, China "has reiterated its principled position," saying she had nothing further to add.
Under a law signed by then-President Joe Biden last year, ByteDance was directed to divest TikTok's US unit by Jan. 19 or face a ban of the app over national security concerns. The company has balked at selling a lucrative business valued from $20 billion to as high as $150 billion depending on the proposed terms and technology included.
Trump has since extended the deadline three times to allow more time for a deal to take shape that would spare TikTok's US operations from a shutdown. His latest extension carries through mid-September, and Trump said during the interview aired Sunday that he would reveal the buyers group "in about two weeks."
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