Trump insists US Treasury should get substantial share of TikTok sale
The American president says his government should get a cut from the sale of TikTok's US operation if an American firm buys it. Donald Trump has warned that he will ban the video-sharing application, owned by a Chinese company, if there is no deal.
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The US leader accuses TikTok and several other Chinese technology companies of providing data to the authorities in Beijing.
Trump has warned that he will ban the application on 15 September, unless the current owners, ByteDance, sell to a US company before then.
Last weekend, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said President Trump would take action "in the coming days" against Chinese-owned software companies that he believed posed a national security risk.
Pompeo told Fox News that TikTok was among those "feeding data directly to the Chinese Communist Party".
He did not offer any evidence to back up that claim.
Trump change-of-heart on Microsoft deal
Microsoft are known to be negotiating with ByteDance.
Last Friday, President Trump said he was opposed to Microsoft buying TikTok's US business.
His latest statement seems to contradict that, provided "the Treasury… of the United States gets a lot of money," the president says.
Legal experts have questioned the president's authority to demand a payment to secure a takeover deal, describing the move as "highly unorthodox".
Beijing objects to US "smash and grab"
China accused the United States on Tuesday of "outright bullying", after President Donald Trump ramped up pressure for TikTok's US operations to be sold to an American company.
"This goes against the principles of the market economy and the WTO's principles of openness, transparency and non-discrimination," said foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin.
The state-run China Daily newspaper said on Tuesday that Beijing would not accept the "theft" of a Chinese technology company.
The paper also warned in an editorial that China had "plenty of ways to respond if the administration carries out its planned smash and grab".
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