President Donald Trump has given his approval “in concept” to a deal being discussed between American companies Oracle and Walmart with China-based company Bytedance for ownership of TikTok.
“We have some very big news on TikTok, TikTok is moving along,” the president told reporters before leaving the White House to attend a campaign rally in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Saturday.
He said that his administration was working with Oracle’s CEO Larry Ellison and Walmart to ensure that any deal with Bytedance would mean that security for the app “will be 100 percent.”
“It‘ll be totally secure, that’ll be part of the deal.
“If they get it done. that’s great. If they don’t, that’s okay.
“Conceptually, I think it’s a great deal for America,” Trump said. “They'll be hiring at least 25,000 people.”
“It‘ll most likely be incorporated in Texas, it’ll be a brand new company ... Billions of dollars of taxes will be paid every year, and hundreds of millions of users, and there‘ll be happy so everybody will be happy. It’s a severance. It’ll continue to be named TikTok, as it was all along. And that’s it.”
Trump also doubled down on his key condition for any deal to go ahead. “It will have nothing to do with any outside land and the outside country, will have nothing to do with China,” he said.
The Department of Commerce said Saturday that given the progress in the deal’s negotiations, Trump had given the green light for Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross to delay the blocking of the TikTok app in U.S. app stores, as outlined in the executive order, from Sept. 20 to Sept. 27.
The president also told reporters that included in Oracle’s deal was a $5 billion contribution towards education in the United States.
“We’re gonna be setting up a very large fund for the education of American youth ... That’s their contribution that I’ve been asking for,” he said.
He said the full details of the deal will be released “very soon.”
