How a Sale of TikTok Would Work and Who Might Buy It
The New York Times
A new law says TikTok must be sold to a non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States. President Trump has thrown out a lot of options for a potential sale.
There's a new parlor game on Wall Street: guessing TikTok’s next owner.
President Trump signed an executive order in January that delayed enforcement of a law that banned the popular video app. Under the order, the app must now be sold to a non-Chinese owner by early April.
Since he signed the order, Mr. Trump has dropped a flurry of sometimes conflicting hints about how the next several weeks could play out: He has suggested he wants a bidding war; he has said the United States should own part of the app; he has named Microsoft and Elon Musk as potential buyers, even as others have raised their hands.
But the mechanics of a potential sale are still murky.
ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, has said for years that it cannot sell the app, in part because the Chinese government would not allow the export of its all-important algorithm.
And it’s not clear TikTok’s American investors are interested in a sale, either.
