Trump Clears Way for Cronies to Buy TikTok for $14 Billion

The New York Times:

President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that would help clear the way for a coalition of investors to run an American version of TikTok, one that is separate from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, so that it can keep operating in the United States.

The administration has been working for months to find non-Chinese investors for a U.S. TikTok company, which Vice President JD Vance said would be valued at $14 billion. [...]

The White House hasn’t said exactly who would own the U.S. version of TikTok, but the list of potential investors includes several powerful allies of Mr. Trump. The software giant Oracle, whose co-founder is the billionaire Larry Ellison, will take a stake in U.S. TikTok. Mr. Trump has also said that the media mogul Rupert Murdoch is involved. A person familiar with the talks said the Murdoch investments would come through Fox Corporation.

$14 billion is a ridiculous valuation. The whole thing is ridiculous, of course, but a fair valuation on the open market would surely be at least 10× that value. They’re not even pretending this is on the up-and-up. And it doesn’t answer the core problem at the heart of the PAFACA Act:

Michael Sobolik, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who is focused on U.S.-China relations, said the White House’s executive order would stoke those questions only because it says “the divestiture includes intense monitoring of software updates, algorithms and data flows.”

“If you control it, why would you need intense monitoring to know what’s happening with it?” Mr. Sobolik said. “Monitoring the algorithm is not the same controlling it. That’s the head fake the administration appears to be trying to pull here.”

★ Thursday, 25 September 2025