TikTok’s Ticking Clock: Trump’s 75-Day Reprieve on Ban Sparks Ownership Scramble

Social media juggernaut TikTok has been given a reprieve thanks to President Trump signing an executive order to delay the enforcement of a ban in America — which amounts to a 75-day lifeline.The order makes good on a promise that the 47th president made Sunday that he would delay enforcement of the ban after it was upheld by the Supreme Court last week. SCOTUS had rejected a free speech challenge made by ByteDance against The Protecting Americans from The Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Biden last year out of national security concerns.Mr. Trump said in his order that it would “determine the appropriate course forward in an orderly way that protects national security while avoiding an abrupt shutdown of a communications platform used by millions of Americans.”He has also suggested in recent days that he would be willing to roll back the Foreign Adversary Act’s mandate that Communist Chinese-owned ByteDance sell off all of its stateside assets to an American company in favor of a 50-50 joint venture, in which an American company would run operations with ByteDance.“I would like the United States to have a 50 percent ownership position in a joint venture. By doing this, we save TikTok, keep it in good hands, and allow it to say up,” he wrote in a post on Truth Social over the weekend. “Without U.S. approval, there is no TikTok. With our approval, it is worth hundreds of billions of dollars — maybe trillions.”Mr. Trump’s comments came as reports surfaced that Perplexity AI has made a bid to merge with TikTok’s operations in America, according to a report from CNBC.The AI search engine startup, which ended 2024 with a valuation near $9 billion, has proposed that the new structure would allow a majority of ByteDance’s investors to retain their stake while bringing more video to train its large language model.It was not immediately clear if officials at ByteDance were open to the offer. Still, the new moratorium would give it time to hammer out a deal that would align with Mr. Trump’s vision of a joint venture.On Monday, rumors swirled on Social Media that Meta had already purchased the app.Users even took to META chief executive Mark Zuckerberg’s Instagram page on Saturday after TikTok was briefly shut down, placing the blame squarely on him.“We all know you’re part of the reason TikTok was taken away,” wrote one commenter on a post by Mr. Zuckerberg.“Because more people used TikTok than Instagram and Facebook probably. He’s probably a big reason why it got banned,” another user wrote.Another bid was made earlier this month by a consortium led by businessman and “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary and Project Liberty but they say they have not heard any response from ByteDance.The entrepreneur said in an interview on Fox Business on Monday that he believes their silence may be due to government officials at Beijing who have leverage over any potential deal due to a “secret arrangement.”“There is something called a secret golden share that every Chinese company has to issue to the CCP leadership. That’s Xi [Jinping] himself, and it turns out that ByteDance can’t negotiate anything unless he’s made a decision,” he said on the business news channel.“The secret share is a veto power over all other shareholders,” he further explained. “They do not have any rights once the secret share has been issued, so now we’re dealing with what to do with the secret share because until he decides what’s going to happen, it doesn’t matter what shareholders think or the CEO or any of the management, it’s irrelevant.”“It’s the secret golden share that determines the fate of TikTok now.”

TikTok’s Ticking Clock: Trump’s 75-Day Reprieve on Ban Sparks Ownership Scramble

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