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President Trump said he would be open to reducing tariffs on China to obtain its backing for an American-owned purchase of the US operations of TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance Ltd. “In my opinion, every portion of tariffs is worth over TikTok,” Trump said while speaking with the press. He asserted that “if I might want to get China to agree to a sale, give them a tariff cut.”
Trump, who has already slapped 20% tariffs on imports from China, is looking to extend the existing TikTok deal to an American-owned company. This was during an event to declare a new 25% auto import levy, which comes ahead of his announcement of a full-blown unilateral tariff plan. The outline of this plan includes additional duties on French wines and Dublin-poured beers. In the upcoming monetary policy meeting, the White House plans to announce a 25% tax on vehicle imports.
He did predict that he would roughly have a deal in place for TikTok by the target date, although it was up in the air if Congress would finalize the deadline.
"'We'll have some kind of a form of deal, but if it is not finalized, not a big deal we can always extend' said Trump. 'I have the right to have the deal, and I can extend it if I so desire’.”In a U.S. law signed last year by President Joe Biden, ByteDance was to sell TikTok’s US operations by Jan 19 of this year. Earlier this year TikTok service was wholly suspended, but that was narrowly averted when an executive order was signed by Trump where he told his administration to push the enforcement deadline of that legislation by an additional 90 days to give him more time to negotiate a deal out of it until April 5.‘Bad Signal’If the Chinese were to agree to this deal, it would be sent out as a clue and would not be good according to international relations’ professor at Shanghai’s East China Normal University, Josef Gregory Mahoney, because it would suggest that those kinds of hostile corporate takeovers are somehow acceptable.”As Mahoney remarks regarding Beijing, “they will be terribly unwilling to allow Trump to handpick his way through the most favorable Chinese brands to use as bargaining chips to drop the tariffs that were placed on them in the first place.” Mahoney went on to say that Beijing has already condemned CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.'s anticipated sale of its Panama ports.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn't instantly reply to a request for comment.
Earlier this month Trump stated that he was in contact with four different eligible bidders for TikTok, but refrained from disclosing their names.
Publicly known bidders include a consortium led by billionaire Frank McCourt and Reddit’s Alexis Ohanian, a venture with tech entrepreneur Jesse Tinsley and Youtuber MrBeast, and a merger bid from Perplexity AI based in San Francisco.
According to sources, Oracle Corp is also considering a bid for the app's American operations which would require the company to provide security guarantees and take a nominal equity position in the new American company, which would be owned by the app and its powerful algorithm, but in Chinese hands.
Not only Trump, but also Tik Tok’s parent company and the Chinese government, would need to be approved for any deal. Winning over ByteDance by keeping their algorithm would make things easier while dealing with Chinese authorities, but risks complicating meeting divestiture requirements.
Once an avid opponent of Tik Tok himself, Trump has now become one of the app's advocates, appreciating the video platform's influence on increasing outreach towards younger voters in his 2024 presidential campaign.
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