The US government is acting like a “middleman” who takes a commission. This is another of the sensational changes brought by tycoon Donald Trump. His administration will receive a commission of about $ 10 billion from investors involved in the deal that, earlier this year, gave the US control over the Chinese platform TikTok in the American market. This money represents a “reward” for helping to keep the popular application alive in the domestic market. The payment is part of the agreement between the investors and ByteDance, the company that owns TikTok.
Among those who will pay the administration are Oracle, the Silver Lake fund and the Abu Dhabi investor Mgx. At the closing of the deal in January, they were paid $2.5 billion. Trump, however, as a businessman, has never hidden this aspect: the United States is receiving an extraordinary commission, just for the fact that it made the deal possible, and I do not want to miss this opportunity! Now the dimensions of this “reward” have become known. But according to the Wall Street Journal, such a payment is almost unprecedented.
Vice President JD Vance had stated that TikTok was valued at $14 billion in the US, a figure that Wall Street analysts considered too low. The $10 billion payment shows that the underestimation was real. The application is valued much more, if only $10 billion goes to the “middleman”. The US administration has defended the commission payment, explaining that Trump has “saved” TikTok and managed negotiations at the highest level with China. The agreement became necessary after Congress, in a bipartisan way, forced TikTok, suspected of collecting the personal data of millions of Americans for the Chinese government, to transfer control of the US market to American companies.
If ByteDance did not do this, the social network would be blocked. Many young Americans protested, demanding the president’s intervention. He, who has a very popular account on TikTok, accepted and included his billionaire friends and presidential campaign donors in the deal.