Donald Trump said Tuesday that he was in favor of the idea of a takeover of TikTok by Elon Musk, if the boss of X, SpaceX, and Tesla wanted to buy the social network from the Chinese company ByteDance, banned in the United States. United since Sunday.
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The American president signed a decree on Monday ordering his government to suspend the application of the law for 75 days, in order to try to find a solution.
He also suggested from the White House that the entity buying TikTok should “give half to the United States” in exchange for a “license.”
The law in question, passed by Congress in 2024 and entered into force on Sunday, requires the parent company of the platform to sell it, under penalty of ban on American territory.
It resulted in inaccessibility to the social network for a few hours this weekend. The law provides for very heavy fines for internet providers and application stores, up to $5,000 per user for the latter.
These sanctions would be imposed by the Department of Justice, which Donald Trump has ordered not to intervene for two and a half months, the time to “consult (his) advisors”, according to the text of the decree.
The measure was enough to reassure Oracle, the American company which hosts TikTok on its computer servers, but not Apple and Google who removed the social network from their mobile application download platforms on Sunday.
The 170 million users who already have TikTok in the United States can therefore continue to use it, but they can no longer regularly update the platform as usual.
“More serious problems”
Donald Trump also intends to use this deadline to assess the security risks posed by TikTok and its Chinese shareholder and “determine whether the measures already taken by TikTok are sufficient”.
American elected officials had justified the passing of the law by the need to prevent the Chinese authorities from accessing the data of American users or from manipulating opinion in the United States.
-But the new head of state, who also wanted to ban TikTok during his first term in the name of national security, this time put the risks posed by the social network into perspective.
“There are so many products that are made in China and the only one they are complaining about is TikTok,” Donald Trump said on Monday, referring to elected officials in Congress.
“Let’s be honest, we have bigger problems than China harvesting information from young children,” TikTok users, he added.
On Tuesday, in response to a reporter’s question, he said he would be “open” to the idea of Elon Musk acquiring the platform “if he wants to.”
The richest man in the world campaigned for the Republican candidate and was given an advisory mission to the government to save money.
Last week, Bloomberg published an article indicating that the Chinese government would be open to a takeover by Elon Musk, a scenario that TikTok had described as “pure fiction”.
“Market principles”
Donald Trump proposed that ByteDance grant the United States 50% of the capital of TikTok in return for non-application of the law.
The government could then attribute this participation to private American interests, according to the new president.
“We might need China’s agreement, but I’m sure they would give it,” Donald Trump said. “TikTok has a lot of value, but if they don’t approve it, it wouldn’t have any more. »
Asked at a press briefing on Monday, the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs indicated that “in matters of operations and acquisitions, companies should decide independently, in accordance with market principles “.
If China refused to give the green light, “we would impose customs duties on them,” warned the American president.
Asked Tuesday about his own use of the app on his phone, which is banned on US government devices, Donald Trump replied that he did not have it, but that he would download it “right away.”
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