(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump said the US was close to unveiling a plan that would spare the Chinese-owned social media app TikTok from a US ban, with multiple investors involved in discussions for a deal.
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“We’re very close to a deal with a very good group of people,” Trump said in remarks aboard Air Force One as he traveled to Florida on Thursday.
Trump reiterated that he would be willing to offer tariff relief in exchange for China’s help in approving an eventual sale of the popular video-sharing platform by its Beijing-based owner, ByteDance Ltd., but cautioned he had “no knowledge” Chinese authorities would adopt that approach.
“You have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say, we’ll approve a deal but will you do something on the tariff? The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have,” he said.
Trump spoke a day after he reviewed a proposal from a consortium of US investors including Oracle Corp., Blackstone Inc. and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz that has emerged as a top contender, according to people familiar with the matter.
Vice President JD Vance is spearheading the administration’s effort to find a buyer before a Saturday deadline. Planning remains fluid and the consortium is still quite preliminary, two of the people cautioned, but Trump has in recent weeks signaled publicly that he would extend the deadline to complete a deal.
A representative for Andreessen Horowitz declined to comment, while Oracle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A White House spokesperson declined to comment on the status of discussions.
Under the bid reviewed by Trump, new outside investors would own 50% of TikTok’s US business in a unit that would be spun off from ByteDance, two of the people said. Existing investors would own about 30% of the business, they said.
ByteDance’s stake in the new US-based venture would fall just below 20%, allowing it to meet the requirements of a US law passed last year requiring the company to divest its American operations or face a ban in the country, the people said.
The proposal calls for TikTok’s influential algorithm to remain with ByteDance and then be licensed to the new US-based venture, two of the people said. Oracle would take a small stake in the venture and provide security assurances, Bloomberg News has reported.
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