Trump sets deadline, insists on compensation to US govt in TikTok sale

 Trump believes US deserves compensation for resolving national security threat posed by TikTok and the administration is looking at ways to extract a payment from any deal that’s struck.

President Donald Trump said he’s told people involved in the sale of the U.S. assets of ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok that the deal must be struck by Sept. 15 and the federal government must be “well compensated,” or the service will be shut down.

“I told them they have until Sept. 15 to make a deal — after that we close it up in this country,” Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One for a trip to Kenosha, Wisconsin. “I said the United States has to be compensated, well compensated.”

It remains unclear how the U.S. would collect compensation from the sale of TikTok. The president said last month that the popular video streaming app’s U.S. operation had to be sold because its Chinese ownership makes it a national security threat.

TikTok has become a flashpoint for U.S. tensions with China. Trump has stepped up his attacks on the video app as his administration increases pressure on China ahead of the November presidential election. Then China on Friday imposed restrictions on the export of artificial intelligence technologies like speech and text recognition, throwing the potential sale into jeopardy. The restrictions will likely make it harder for ByteDance to get government approval for any deal.

“It’s difficult to tell now whether a deal will happen,” said Doug Barry, senior director of communications at the US-China Business Council. “Both countries want to dominate the key technologies of the future.”

Trump believes that the U.S. deserves compensation for resolving the national security threat posed by TikTok and the administration is looking at ways to extract a payment from any deal that’s struck, according to a person familiar with the matter. Another person said it’s unclear what Trump means when he refers to compensation in any deal, and that it would be the Treasury Department’s job to figure out how to make it work. Both people asked not to be named discussing non-public deliberations.

Microsoft Corp. has teamed up with Walmart Inc. to bid for TikTok’s U.S. assets and they’re vying against a competing offer from Oracle Corp.