Trump Administration To Reportedly Get $10B For Brokering TikTok Deal

The payment is part of the agreement through which investors friendly with the administration gained control of TikTok’s U.S. operations from Chinese parent ByteDance, a report from the Wall Street Journal said.

• It comes in addition to the investments made to create a new entity to run the app in the U.S, the report said.
• Last month, Chinese firm ByteDance struck a deal to sell its U.S. operations and secure U.S. data after continued pressure and threats of a forced ban in the country.
• As part of the agreement, American and global investors will hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%. 

The Trump administration is reportedly set to receive a roughly $10 billion fee from investors in the recently completed deal to take control of TikTok’s U.S. business. 

The investors include technology company Oracle, private-equity firm Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi investor MGX. They and other backers had paid the Treasury Department about $2.5 billion when the deal closed in January and are set to make several additional payments, hitting $10 billion total, a Wall Street Journal report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The payment is part of the agreement through which investors friendly with the administration gained control of TikTok’s U.S. operations from Chinese parent ByteDance. It comes in addition to the investments made to create a new entity to run the app in the U.S., the report said.

TikTok Deal

Last month, Chinese firm ByteDance struck a deal to sell its U.S. operations and secure U.S. data after continued pressure and threats of a forced ban in the country. As part of the agreement, American and global investors will hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%. 

ByteDance in the announcement had said that TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC will secure U.S. user data, apps and algorithms through data privacy and cybersecurity measures. It disclosed few details about the divestiture.

Trump had praised the deal and wrote in a social media post saying that TikTok "will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World."

U.S. equities fell on Friday’s extended hours of trading. At the time of writing, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), which tracks the S&P 500 index, was down 0.3%, the Invesco QQQ Trust ETF (QQQ) dived 0.04%, while the SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF Trust (DIA) was down 0.2%.