President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, has made a demand for a “substantial portion” of the sale of TikTok’s US unit if an American firm buys it via a phone call with Microsoft’s boss.
Trump also warned that he will ban the app, which is a Chinese-owned video app, on September 15 if there is no deal.
The Chinese company that owns TikTok, ByteDance, is under pressure to sell its US business after Trump threatened a crackdown on Chinese tech companies.
“It’s got to be an American company… it’s got to be owned here, we don’t want to have any problem with security”, Trump said.
The Trump administration has accused TikTok of providing data to the Chinese government, which Beijing and TikTok deny.
He said, “The United States should get a very large percentage of that price because we’re making it possible. I have set a date, September 15, to strike a deal, at which point it’s going to be out of business in the United States.”
At the weekend, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said President Trump would take action “in the coming days” against the company because he believed they posed a national security risk and that TikTok was among those “feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party”.
However, he did not provide any evidence to back up his claims.
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