Trump's demand for US cut of a TikTok deal is unprecedented

Trump's demand for US cut of a TikTok deal is unprecedented

SeattlePI.com

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NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump's demand that the U.S. government get a cut from a potential Microsoft purchase of TikTok is the latest unprecedented scenario in an unprecedented situation.

Microsoft is in talks to buy parts of TikTok, a forced sale after Trump threatened to ban the Chinese-owned video app, which claims 100 million U.S. users and hundreds of millions globally. The Trump administration says TikTok is a national-security concern. How a ban would have worked was not clear; that federal authority has never been used before with a consumer app. TikTok denies that it would send U.S. user data to the Chinese government.

Microsoft did not address a potential price when it confirmed the talks.

Trump said Monday to reporters that the U.S. “should get a very large percentage of that price because we’re making it possible," adding that “we want and we think we deserve to have a big percentage of that price coming to America, coming to the Treasury.”

Trump sometimes floats ideas or actions that get set aside without follow-through. Appearing on the Fox Business Network Tuesday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared to walk back the idea of a payment to the Treasury, saying “I don't know if that's a key stipulation.”

TikTok was under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, a U.S. government group that studies mergers for national-security reasons, for its acquisition of another video app, Musical.ly, in 2017. CFIUS collects filing fees, but those top out at $300,000.

“I doubt that’s what Trump has in mind,” said Hal Singer, an antitrust expert and principal at consulting firm Economists Incorporated. “Outside of that I can’t think of any means by which the U.S. could basically...

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