Trump demands US get cut from TikTok deal

NEW YORK — President Donald Trump’s demand that the U.S. government get a cut from a potential Microsoft purchase of TikTok is the latest unprecedented scenario in an unprecedented situation.

Microsoft is in talks to buy parts of TikTok, a forced sale after Trump threatened to ban the Chinese-owned video app, which claims 100 million U.S. users and hundreds of millions globally.

The Trump administration says TikTok is a national security concern. But how a ban would have worked was not clear — federal authority has never been used before with a consumer app.

TikTok denies it would send U.S. user data to the Chinese government.

Trump said this week to 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.”

Trump sometimes floats ideas or actions that get set aside without follow-through. On the Fox Business Network Tuesday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared to walk back the idea of a payment to the Treasury, saying “I don’t know if that’s a key stipulation.”

TikTok was under review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS, a U.S. government group that studies mergers for national security reasons, for its acquisition of another video app, Musical.ly, in 2017. CFIUS collects filing fees, but those top out at $300,000.

“I doubt that’s what Trump has in mind,” said Hal Singer, an antitrust expert and principal at consulting firm Economists Incorporated. “Outside of that I can’t think of any means by which the U.S. could basically get its vig on its forced transfer.”

“Vig” is slang for interest on a loan, usually in the context of illegal activity, or the fee charged by a bookie for a bet.

There’s no legal precedent in antitrust law for such, said Gene Kimmelman, a senior adviser at the advocacy group Public Knowledge and a former antitrust official at the Department of Justice.