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Trump not happy with Oracle having minority shares in TikTok

WION Web Team
Washington, United StatesUpdated: Sep 17, 2020, 08:17 AM IST
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Photograph:(Reuters)

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Senator Marco Rubio and five other Republican senators on Wednesday urged the administration to reject the deal as long as ties remained to Chinese owner ByteDance, and asked the President to block the proposal

TikTok's deadline to sell its US shares is fast approaching, but the deal has still not been finalised. Hoewever, the US President  Donald Trump has made it clear that the Chinese-owned company will not get any extensions.

After Microsoft's bid was rejected after extended talks between between the America-based tech giant Microsoft and the Chinese parent company ByteDance, news about Oracle Corp partnering with ByteDance started making the headines.

However, that deal may be in danger too as Trump has raised questions about this deal as he is not in favour of a Chinese company sharing the deal.

As per the deal, ByteDance may keep a majority of the US operations, and Trump's administration has warned him against it. He said he is aware about the ongoing deal but is not happy with the idea of the Chinese firm retaining the majority control.

Senator Marco Rubio and five other Republican senators on Wednesday urged the administration to reject the deal as long as ties remained to Chinese owner ByteDance, and asked the President to block the proposal.

"Conceptually, I can tell you that I don't like that," Trump told reporters. "I'm not prepared to sign off on anything. They're going to be reporting to me tomorrow morning and I'll let you know."

Senator Ted Cruz, too, has opposed the Oracle deal claiming it undermines the President's executive orders and raises questions about national security.

"We remain opposed to any deal that would allow China-based or controlled entities to retain, control or modify the code or algorithms that operate any US-based version of TikTok," Senator Marco Rubio wrote.

"We are heartened that this deal still requires government approval, and if reports indicating this proposed deal will retain links to ByteDance or other Chinese-controlled entities, we strongly urge the administration to reject such a proposal on national security grounds," he added.

Lawmakers fear if Oracle gets minority shares and ByteDance continues to own majority shares, the alleged practice of continuing to supply data to China will not stop.

However, this decision is coming very close to the upcoming US elections that are few weeks away. Donald Trump, who is competing against Joe Biden, would not want to make his young voters, who are addicted to TikTok, to feel alienated and be angry at him.

The decision to allow TikTok to continue will partially hold the power to decide whether or not Trump gets majority votes this November.