Donald Trump Refuses to Extend TikTok Buyer Search Times
The US authorities have set the following milestones in the implementation of the requirements of the decree on the sale of American business TikTok: by September 20, a buyer must be found, by November 12, the transaction could be made. If a buyer is not found by September 20, then from September 29 the TikTok service will be banned in the United States. Donald Trump made it clear that he does not intend to extend the terms.
The parties could be given more time for negotiations in light of the new requirements of the Chinese authorities, which oblige ByteDance developers to coordinate with them the transfer of the software algorithms that underlie TikTok’s recommendation function outside China. Microsoft has shown interest in buying TikTok’s business in the United States in tandem with Walmart, competing with Oracle, the founder of which is a supporter of Donald Trump’s political line.
It would seem that if the participants in the negotiation process are ready to reach some kind of compromise, then the failure of the entire deal is not in their interests, but the political factor intervened once again when US President Donald Trump this week, during a conversation with journalists, said that he was not going to extend the timeline in a TikTok deal. According to him, “it will either be concluded or the service will be banned in the United States,” and no one is going to extend the terms.
US Senator Josh Hawley, a Trump supporter, told Reuters that he also does not support the idea of increasing the timing of the deal, and is not ready to accept any other scheme that does not imply the complete separation of TikTok’s American operations from Chinese developers. He is convinced that the source code used by ByteDance contains loopholes for gaining unauthorized access to Americans’ personal data.
