Trump Approves TikTok Deal
The Wall Street Journal reports Trump Signs Off on TikTok Deal With Oracle, Walmart.
President Trump said he has agreed in concept to a deal under which Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok will partner with Oracle Corp. and Walmart Inc. to become a U.S.-based company, capping negotiations that have stirred debate over national security and the future of the internet.
“I have given the deal my blessing, if they get it done that’s OK too, if they don’t that’s fine too,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Saturday.
With the announcement of a deal, the Commerce Department said it would delay a ban on U.S. downloads and updates for the TikTok app that was set to take effect at 11:59 p.m. Sunday. The ban is now set to take effect Sept. 27, but could be further delayed or removed if the proposed new partnership goes forward.
Deal Terms and Ownership
- Oracle will take a 12.5% stake in the new entity called TikTok Global, and would provide secure cloud service.
- Walmart will purchase 7.5% of TikTok Global and will provide e-commerce, fulfillment, payments and other services to the new company.
- TikTok’s current owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., would retain roughly 80% ownership of the company, according to people familiar with the situation. But because ByteDance is about 40% owned by U.S. investors, the new company with equity stakes for Oracle and Walmart can be described as having majority American ownership, they said.
WeChat Ban Halted on Freedom of Speech Concerns
US Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler Sided With WeChat on grounds of freedom of speech.
Beeler entered an order Sunday for a preliminary injunction blocking the federal ban on U.S. downloads and other functions from going into force as scheduled for 11:59 p.m. Sunday.
In her 22-page order, Judge Beeler agreed with free-speech arguments raised by the user groups, saying she is convinced that “there are no viable substitute platforms or apps for the Chinese-speaking and Chinese-American community.”
“WeChat is effectively the only means of communication for many in the community, not only because China bans other apps, but also because Chinese speakers with limited English proficiency have no options other than WeChat,” she said in the order.
The mobile app, which has 19 million regular users in the U.S. and more than 1.2 billion users world-wide, enables users to send messages, make phone calls and transfer money. It also functions as a social-media platform and is widely used by companies in China—including U.S. companies operating there—for business communications and marketing.
US Security Threat Claim
The BBC notes Trump’s security claim.
The US Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement that the decision to block the app was taken “to combat China’s malicious collection of American citizens’ personal data”.
The department said WeChat collected “vast swathes of data from users, including network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories”.
WeChat’s Claim
WeChat insists encryption means others cannot “snoop” on your messages, and that content such as text, audio and images are not stored on its servers – and are deleted once all intended recipients have read them.
The Evidence?
If there is any evidence to support Trump’s claim, can we please see it?
If not, this is best considered as nothing but another Trump power play on China.
Recall that Trump labeled imports of cars from the EU a security threat.
Boy Cries Wolf
After that ridiculopus security threat charge regarding autos, there is not a single claim Trump or his administration makes that can be trusted at face value.
That is what happens when you cry “wolf” when there isn’t a wolf around for a thousand square miles.
A similar thing happened with Huawei, China’s 5G technology company. Trump labeled it a security threat then stated he would negotiate on Huawei if China would buy more soybeans.
Please see Where national security meets Trump’s transactional worldview.
The most damaging element of the episode is the president’s transactional response to a highly critical national security issue. He directly tied Huawei’s fate to the final outcome of the US-China trade negotiations — and further underscored his limited, and willfully superficial, view of the gravity of the Huawei challenge by noting defensively that US farmers will benefit hugely from the trade truce and by a future trade deal.
Either this is outright crazy or Huawei was not really a security threat.
Since then, Trump has tried to block Huawei at every turn. There was no phase II deal.
Decoupling Madness
No one should take any of Trump’s claims seriously nor trust any deal he makes.
This is all about Trump’s intent to decouple from China. And that idea is absurd.
For discussion, please see Trump Promotes Decoupling From China With No Clue as to How It Can Work
Mish
Sorry if its related to national security, you will never get to see it. Its easy to find a liberal judge in California to block anything Trump decides is required. In the end it will get supported by the Supreme Court.
I remember reading about a DOJ lawyer who intentionally wrote the DOJ complaint against district court injunction on some Trump order in such a way that she knew it would lose and later bragged about it.
I do not remember the case.
However there has been obstruction right from the start by Obama appointees like this one:
Later Supreme Court declared Trump’s travel ban lawful.
China is saying Tiktok wil be a subsidiary . Tiktok denies 5 billion education payment. Ellison is not gaining control of Tiktok’s software. This is another Trump charade. The Senate should be investigating and reigning Trump in. Instead they are preparing a bogus report on Joe Biden
What’s there to not understand the security issue. Anything that can be CCP state controlled, you can’t fix it when it’s too late.
All these theatric plays are all about tRump’s ego for dominance rather than national security. Just look at the case of Wechat: it’s mainly used in the US by chinese or chinese-americans to communicate with families and friends in China, and some Americans who have close ties with China because of businesses. All of those users are very happy with WeChat.
TikTok went to Wall Street when China wanted to present itself as a global player that is interested only in commerce. Under the new regime ushered in by Trump, China could buy out US investors’ stake in TikTok and make it wholly Chinese, then ignore the US market and use Trump’s ban as a marketing tool around the globe.
Only TikTok would lose credibility because noone like Julian Assange has ever emerged in China and can still walk free. Oh wait…
Tiktok denies the 5,000,000. The deal accomplishes nothing. This has more to do with kpop, a Trump mp rally and an ego more than national security
Tik Tok, Twitter, Google, Facebook, gooogle… Seriously? This is what the president is concerned with? We’re having serious discussions about gibberish while the world burns around us.
Was the human condition always so spectacularly stupid, or am I just now noticing?
“president is concerned with? “
Himself.
World is burning around us because Google, Facebook and Twitter all AMPLIFY leftists/Democrats claims without a factcheck and despite them inciting violence like burning down Mitch McConnell’s house and Whitehouse and delete conservatives in large numbers and limit their opinions from spreading even when they are factual.
The whole claim that police shoot lots of unarmed blacks is a LIE that has been created by leftists/Democrats and repeated 24/7 for months by media and spread by social media companies and Google through their algorithm by down-weighting conservative sites since August 2018 in search results.
Why are social media companies allowing incitement to riot, loot, arson and topple statues to spread?
It is a political choice by the employees and in Twitter’s case it must come from management.
In actual fact US police killed just 9 unarmed blacks in 2019 and 19 unarmed whites and most were attacking police with a car or with their fists and kicks or claimed to have a gun.
American blacks commit almost 50% of violent crimes in USA and 53% of murders despite being just 13% of the population so naturally they have more tense encounters with police where police is trying to arrest them than whites so to look at the shootings and compare them to demographics is completely faulty way of looking at the issue.
If you are an unarmed white you have greater probability of being shot dead if you get in contact in a tense situation with police where they are trying to arrest you as a suspect than if you are black.
Imagine that instead of spreading these claims from BLM/leftists/Democrats/Media that blacks are shot or killed by police in much larger numbers than whites while unarmed that Facebook/Twitter had factchecked these claims and told to everyone spreading them the actual facts and stats and instead of up-ranking all leftists sites Google had up-ranked sites spreading the fact that compared to criminality among blacks they are LESS LIKELY to be shot by police than whites while unarmed.
This deal gives me a time warner/aol vibe, though much smaller it seems like the road to nowhere.
tRump wants to have the absolute control and dominance on the world. Anyone who does not knee in front of him and kiss his ass is considered by him to be a national security threat.
Trump is worried about Americans data? What a joke. Google and Facebook already have it all and sell it to anyone. Better off living in a real democracy like Uruguay instead of this banana republic $hithole.
Is there any data pertinent to our security left to mine here anyway? I think the court decision was made on some pretty questionable logic, fwiw….but this whole issue has never been anything but ironic to me. Both the US and China have gone full Big Brother some time back.