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Twitter enters the bid for TikTok, the app on which Donald Trump declared war

2020-08-10T00:07:21.985Z


The Republican declared it a threat to national security and forced its sale before the end of the month. And Microsoft?


08/09/2020 - 20:56

  • Clarín.com
  • Technology

Twitter joins the negotiations for the purchase of the Tik Tok application, after US President Donald Trump declared it a threat to national security forcing the company that owns ByteDance to sell it.

The Chinese company, which has 45 days to complete a transaction, was already in negotiations with the US giant Microsoft.

However, the San Francisco society has already had preliminary meetings with its Chinese counterpart, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is already in an advanced stage of the negotiations and has a better chance since Twitter is a much smaller company and would have more difficulties to pay.

Although the valuation of TikTok's US operations is not entirely clear, analysts estimate it at tens of billions of dollars, so it is believed that Twitter - with a market capitalization of about $ 29 billion - would need support from investors to carry out the merger.

The figures that were handled around a possible agreement with Microsoft range from 10 billion to 30 billion dollars. 

Meanwhile, the microblogging network has already had a failed experience with Vine, a short video app that achieved some popularity but did not prosper, and was closed in 2016.

Losses for USA

The cold war tech , as various media have baptized the Trump administration outpost against Chinese applications that it denounces for espionage in favor of the communist party, has generated different opinions.

Donald Trump signed an executive order banning companies from doing business with ByteDance, the owner of TikTok. AP Photo

One of them, cited by the Chinese news agency Xinhua, is that of Wei Shangjin, a professor of finance and economics at the College of Postgraduate Business Studies and the College of Public and International Affairs at Columbia University.

The professor said that forcing TikTok to sell itself cheaply to a "very American" buyer will put many American companies in the Chinese market at risk, according to an opinion piece published Thursday by Project Syndicate.

"If China were to mimic Trump's tactic, claiming, without providing proof, that some US multinationals are potential threats to national security, it could force them to sell their operations to 'very Chinese' buyers. Although the Chinese government has yet to do this, the risk (of it happening) has gotten higher, "said Wei, who served as chief economist at the Asian Development Bank from 2014-2016.

Trump issued an executive order on Thursday prohibiting any US transaction with Chinese technology company ByteDance, which owns TikTok, starting 45 days from the same Thursday.

In addition, the Senate approved a bill banning this app on government phones, and Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, launched the "clean net" initiative that seeks to prohibit the use of more Chinese apps on the cell phones of Americans. . 

TikTok has trained more than 175 million downloads in the United States and more than 1 billion worldwide, according to the executive order, which states that the application automatically captures "vast swaths of information" from its users, posing risks to the United States national security.

A similar executive order was also issued for WeChat, a social media and messaging app owned by Chinese tech giant Tencent.

Although Trump's actions could generate a short-term gain for the United States, they have introduced serious potential risks to American interests, not to mention international and domestic trade rules, Wei said.

"After all, what would happen to business confidence if governments assumed they can extort money from private companies at will?" Wei added.

Source: ANSA and Xinhua

PJB

Source: clarin

All tech articles on 2020-08-10

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