TRUMP WANTS CUT OF TIKTOK DEAL
President Donald Trump’s unprecedented demand that the U.S. government get a cut from a potential Microsoft purchase of TikTok has raised questions. Microsoft is in talks to buy parts of TikTok in a sale forced by Trump’s threat to ban the Chinese-owned video app on national security concerns. TikTok denies that it would send U.S. user data to the Chinese government. Trump told reporters that the U.S. “should get a very large percentage of that price because we’re making it possible,” adding that “we want and we think we deserve to have a big percentage of that price coming to America, coming to the Treasury.” There’s no legal precedent in antitrust law for such a payment, according to experts. And there are no “obvious antitrust or other legal bases” for the demand for “what is in effect a payoff to the U.S. government,” said Eswar Prassad, an economist at Cornell University. “The notion of a payment to the U.S. government sets a dangerous precedent of explicit entanglement between national security and economic considerations.” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany sidestepped a question Tuesday about what authority the federal government had to collect a portion of proceeds from the potential sale of TikTok, saying “I’m not going to get ahead of the president on any official action.” Treasury did not reply to questions about what legal precedent Trump is relying on to get a payment for the TikTok deal.