Reports confirm that the White House has temporarily accepted Oracle’s bid for TikTok. However, President Donald Trump expresses he wants $5 billion from it.
President Trump’s need for a part on the TikTok deal is reportedly for an educational fund, CNN reports. According to his campaign speech in North Carolina, he would like to use the said amount to educate the people of the U.S. “real history.”
The TikTok deal
On Monday, ByteDance, the Chinese owner of the famous mobile app, has released a statement clarifying the deal it made with Oracle and Walmart.
Accordingly, ByteDance will still own a majority stake on the app. Notably, the company will still have 80% ownership of the company, while Oracle now has 20% of it. Walmart, on the other hand, will serve as TikTok’s “commercial partner.”
The whole TikTok issue was rooted in security concerns. However, ByteDance will not give its app’s algorithms to Oracle. Instead, the company will give Oracle the authority to perform security checks on “TikTok’s U.S. source codes.”
“The current plan does not involve the transfer of any algorithms and technologies. Oracle has the authority to check the source code of TikTok USA. Displaying the source code is a universal solution for multinational companies to face local data security concerns,” says ByteDance.
Furthermore, ByteDance will be paying US$5 billion dollars as a tax payment. ByteDance explains:
“The so-called tax payment of $5 billion to the U.S. Treasury Department is a forecast of the corporate income tax and other operating taxes that TikTok will need to pay for its business development in the next few years.”
ByteDance didn’t know about the $5 billion educational fund
On Saturday, Trump told his supporters that he has requested “$5 billion into a fund for education so we can educate people as to real history of our country — the real history, not the fake history.”
However, TechRadar says ByteDance was not aware of such a plan. But they did address this “rumor” on its official statement. Although, the Chinese tech giant says it has “consistently devoted effort to education.”
Per CNN, it is not clear which company involved will be paying up Trump’s $5-billion request. He did say that he regrets not asking for more.
“My only problem is they did it so fast I should have asked for more,” CNN quotes the current POTUS.
Trump has since been accused of “economic bullying.” Nonetheless, the news publication notes that should this said deal pushes through, ByteDance’s U.S. TikTok headquarters will be driving the project.
This means the “newly created TikTok company” will control the said fund and decide where and how to invest it.
Featured image courtesy of Morning Brew/Unsplash