President Trump gave his verbal approval to a potential deal between TikTok and an American company like Microsoft on Monday, but said TikTok had until Sept. 15 to close such a deal or face a U.S. ban.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s the deal. I don\u2019t mind if \u2014 whether it\u2019s Microsoft or somebody else \u2014 a big company, a secure company, a very American company buys it,\u201d Trump told reporters at the White House. \u201cIt\u2019s probably easier to buy the whole thing than to buy 30 percent of it. \u2026 Who\u2019s going to get the name, the name is hot?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has been weighing TikTok\u2019s fate since last year, launching an investigation into the short video company amid fears that its Beijing-based parent ByteDance shares customer information with the Communist Chinese government.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe question is, given China\u2019s civil-military infusion \u2026 can we trust any company that operates in China, has servers in China, has software in China, to protect your children?\u201d Peter Navarro told Fox News on Monday.<\/p>\n
ByteDance entered into talks about a month ago with Microsoft to buy TikTok\u2019s U.S. operations as a way to save the business from a decision by the administration that would prevent the popular app from being used by U.S. consumers.<\/p>\n
Microsoft confirmed Sunday that it was in talks over a potential TikTok purchase.<\/p>\n