The sale of Tiktok, imposed by the American Congress, takes to materialize a few days of another deadline on Thursday, that Donald Trump should return once again, due to lack of green light from China.
In an interview with the NBC channel, at the beginning of May, the US President said that they plan, without a transfer agreement, a new postponement of the deadline, the third after two suspects of 75 days each.
Contacted by AFP on this issue, the White House did not follow up.
A ban is expected since 2024
The social network remains under a prohibition in the United States, under a law approved in Congress in 2024, if its parent company does not abandon control.
According to several American media, a protocol was found in early April. It provided the separation of the United States Tiktok from the Bytedance group, with a capital recomposition.
The shares held by non -Chinese investors went from 60 to 80%, with the byte maintaining the 20% it currently has.
The Oracle Ti group, which already houses the Tiktok US data about its US servants, should be in the maneuver, accompanied, in particular, by the active manager of Blackstone or businessman Michael Dell.
But the announcement of customs duties imposed by Donald Trump to its commercial partners, with a particularly salty note for China, with 54% (then raised to 145%), blocked the Chinese lateral transaction.
Tiktok: “More simply a social network”
“Tiktok is no longer simply a social network,” said Shweta Singh, professor at the British University of Warwick. “It has become a symbol of technological rivalry between the United States and China.”
Two and a half months later, if the two countries agreed at the beginning of June in a “general framework” to normalize their commercial relations, the Tiktok archive remains in suffering. The platform did not respond to AFP applications.
But far from suffering this geopolitical crisis, the network still claims 170 million users in the United States, including 7.5 million commercial accounts, large groups to SMEs.
“Unless they take Trump to return, they will probably continue to do well,” anticipates Rob Enderle, Enderle Group analyst. “I don’t see any reason to (the president) attack Tiktok now.”
According to the specialized Appfigures site, the social network is the second most downloaded application in the United States behind Chatgpt on Android phones.
The indulgence shown by the billionaire, which reiterated NBC to have “a small weakness for Tiktok,” significantly diluted the urgency of the situation. On the platform, only a few messages evoke, without passion, the date of June 19, its authors convinced of a new period to come.
The contrast is marked with the beginning of the year, which had seen many influential people prepare their migration to other skies, in particular Instagram or YouTube.
Donald Trump turns back
In early May, in NBC, Donald Trump still claimed to integrate the Tiktok component with broader negotiations with China in trade, so that it is a type of bonus, but the two subjects seem to be well dissociated today.
Other candidates for a redemption of the platform had positioned themselves at the beginning of the year, in particular the “freedom of the project” of entrepreneur Frank McCourt and the AI of generative perplexity (AI) Start-Up (AI), each of which wishes to integrate the application into a broader model.
The first did not respond to an AFP request, while the second refused to comment.
The mystery remains in the famous Tiktok recommendation algorithm, whose sophistication explains, in large part, the success of the platform.
At the moment, the Bytedance has never accepted the principle of a sale of this technological jewel, claimed by Congress, which cares about the use of data by China or an attempt to influence American opinion.
But as the limit of Thursday focuses, the elected officials of the Congress, however reassembly a few months ago, now seem to be selfless in the file.
Source: BFM TV
