President Donald Trump is desperate to close a deal for a U.S.-based buyer to purchase TikTok. So desperate, in fact, that he has proposed giving China relief on tariffs if its government approves a deal. That proposal has predictably been panned by Democrats and Republicans alike.
After all, Trump said he was placing tariffs on China largely to try to stop fentanyl from reaching the United States. The fact he’s willing to dangle a reduction in exchange for a TikTok deal shows how incoherent his talk about tariffs is and how eager he is to bring TikTok under America’s — and perhaps, by extension, his administration’s — control.
All the while, Big Tech elites and the companies they lead are circling TikTok like sharks, hoping they get their shot to sink their teeth into the app.
Last year, I wrote about how rich right-wingers, including “Shark Tank” co-panelist Kevin O’Leary, have shown interest in a purchase. And now, Amazon has joined the list of suitors looking to buy the app.
Amazon has made a late bid to purchase TikTok, a person familiar with the ongoing White House-led discussions to identify a non-Chinese buyer for the social media app told NBC News. The bid, first reported by The New York Times, arrived this week, via a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Given the last-minute timing, days before a Saturday deadline to stave off a ban of the app in the U.S., the bid is not being treated as serious, said the source, who was granted anonymity to share details of private negotiations.
TikTok was set to be banned in January as a result of a bipartisan bill, signed last spring by President Joe Biden, that required the Chinese-owned app to be sold to an American-based owner or cease operating in the United States. The app’s owners didn’t meet that deadline, of course, and TikTok was briefly banned. But Trump defied the law when he took office, signing an executive order saying that he was instructing the Justice Department to not take action against TikTok for a period of 75 days, which ends Saturday.
For the record, legal experts have sounded the alarm on Trump’s authoritarian power grab in this case, although sadly, many TikTok fans have seemed indifferent to it as long as they can still have access to their favorite mind control device. Trump’s personal involvement in the negotiations has set up a possibility that TikTok, which like other apps has occasionally been plagued by a raft of propaganda and misinformation, might be sold to a MAGA-friendly owner who is sympathetic to conservatives’ rage over content moderation. Ownership by Amazon, the company owned by Jeff Bezos, certainly wouldn’t dispel concerns — mine, at least — that TikTok could become even more of a boon for Trump’s movement than it already has been. Amazon donated $1 million toward Trump’s inauguration, Bezos appeared onstage with the gaggle of Big Tech oligarchs at Trump’s inaugural ceremony, Amazon reportedly signed a sweetheart $40 million deal for the rights to distribute a documentary about with first lady Melania Trump, and Bezos’ changes at The Washington Post — which he also owns — have justifiably prompted speculation that he’s transforming it to become more friendly to Trump. Beyond that, the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue released a report in 2022 finding that Amazon’s recommendation algorithms were steering some people toward conspiracy theories and extremist content. To put it mildly, that’s not great for a company looking to purchase what is arguably the most popular social media platform in the world. That said, there are other sharks in the water looking to sink their teeth into TikTok, and Trump is obviously champing at the bit to secure a buyer before Saturday.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.
Latest Post
Recommended
