Trump not ready to approve Oracle-TikTok deal as majority stake lies with Chinese Company

As there were reports of Oracle inching closer to a deal with popular short video making app TikTok, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday raised apprehensions about TikTok's parent company ByteDance keeping majority stakes in the US operation of the app. 

While addressing media, Trump said he was not ready to approve the proposal that would make the Chinese company keep the majority stakes in the US operations.

He said he is going to be briefed about the proposal on Thursday where Oracle becomes the "trusted technology provider" for TikTok. Trump's apprehensions came after six Republican senators urged the administration to refuse the deal as long as the parent Chinese company remains in the picture as the Trump administration wanted the Chinese company to divest its operation from the US due to national security concerns and make an exit from the country. Trump had also threatened the company to ban the app, unless the company sells its US operations to a US company.

“Conceptually, I can tell you that I don’t like that. It has to be 100 percent as far as national security is concerned, he said.

"And no, I’m not prepared to sign off on anything. I need to see the deal. They’re going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning and I’ll let you know,” Trump said while speaking to media on Wednesday, as the deadline nears for TikTok owners to sell its US operations by September 20.

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Brokerage not possible

Trump had also demanded a significant part of the deal to go to US Treasury Department too, however he said he had been advised on Wednesday that it wasnt possible.

"Amazingly, I find that you're not allowed to do that. What kind of a thing is this? I said. I want a big chunk of that money to go to the United States government because we made it possible. And the lawyers come back to me and they say there is no way of doing that because nobody has ever heard of that before," he said. 

Earlier, there were reports about Microsoft being in advanced stages of inking a deal with TikTok, however that now seems far from reality.

ByteDance had submitted its proposal which mentioned that the Chinese company would have a majority stake in the global business of TikTok, with headquarters in the US, according to reports. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday that ByteDance has also offered to create 20,000 jobs with TikTok in the US. If the deal gets a go ahead, then Oracle would become ByteDance's technology partner responsible for the management of TikTok's data and take a minority stake in TikTok.

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