Will China sell TikTok’s US operations to Elon Musk?

The bomb was dropped a few hours ago Bloomberg: “Chinese officials are evaluating a possible option involving Elon Musk acquiring TikTok’s U.S. operations if the company fails to fend off the app’s controversial ban.”

At the moment, the future of TikTok is being decided in the US Supreme Court, where nine judges have been hearing the arguments of ByteDance, the parent company, since last Friday, which is trying to block the entry into force on January 19. , one day before Donald Trump’s inauguration, of a law that prohibits the platform in the US.

The Supreme Court judges, on the other hand, seem to lean toward the position adopted by the Biden administration and the bipartisan legislators who passed the law: TikTok serves the interests of the Chinese Communist Party, which is why it represents a security threat. national and therefore must be prohibited.

Unless the court surprises at the last minute by issuing a ruling that prevents the law from coming into force, the future of TikTok in the US depends on its disappearance from the application stores unless ByteDance takes a step that a and again that I would never give: sell its stake – approximately 40% – to a non-Chinese entity or investment group.

This last part is where Elon Musk would come in and the news published by Bloombergwhich cites anonymous sources to ensure that in Beijing they are seriously debating that the ownership of the platform in the US could end up in the hands of the billionaire who will be a key figure in the Government of Donald Trump, who has positioned himself in favor of blocking the law .

The elector president presented a letter addressed to the nine judges of the highest judicial body to ask them to Do not forget that the rights of freedom of expression of all Americans are protected by the First Amendment. Trump urged the justices to suspend the law so that, once he takes office, he can negotiate a resolution that addresses security concerns, but also saves the short video app, on which he has 14.7 million of followers, which has been very useful in engaging younger voters.

ByteDance, which is based in Beijing, has reiterated that the sale of TikTok’s US business – which could reach a price of between $40 billion and $50 billion – is in no way among its plans. If the company decided to take that step to avoid the ban, it could not do so without the authorization from the Chinese government which in 2020 updated its export control rules to veto any deal that would involve selling Chinese technology to an American buyer. Beijing has publicly said it will oppose to any forced sale.

“ByteDance is not an agent of China and TikTok has never shared or received a request to share data of American users with the Chinese Government,” said the company’s CEO, Singaporean Shou Zi Chew, who defends that the information about American users moves to servers managed by Oracle Corporationbased in Texas. Under that structure, according to Chew, there is no way for China to access that information.

“Senior Chinese officials had already begun discussing contingency plans for TikTok as part of a broad discussion about how to work with Donald Trump’s administration, one of which involves Musk,” notes the report published by Bloomberg.

“In a scenario that has been discussed by the Chinese Government,

Several large American media outlets have asked TikTok representatives about this news, who have described the possible sale of the application to Musk as “pure fiction.”

Last year, the House of Representatives and the Senate overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan law, signed in April with Biden’s signature, to ban TikTok in the US if ByteDance did not sell its majority stake before January 19, 2025.

TikTok appealed to a lower federal court, which in December refused to block the law. Then, the company, resorting to the First Amendment, challenged this ruling by exhausting the last judicial avenue it had by going to the Supreme Court, which agreed to consider the appeal. On Friday, the nine judges, most of them conservative, heard oral arguments from TikTok’s lawyers.