In September, Donald Trump claimed that “the United States is getting a tremendous fee” for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is supposedly being paid by new investors, including Oracle and Silver Lake. Reports are that $2.5 billion was already paid to the Treasury when the deal closed on January 22nd. The rest will be paid out in installments.
Trump administration is allegedly collecting $10 billion on the TikTok deal
The new investors are on the hook for a huge transaction fee.
The new investors are on the hook for a huge transaction fee.
Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images
is the Verge’s weekend editor. He’s covered the tech industry for over 18 years and knows a thing or two about synths.
This is the latest example of the Trump administration inserting itself into private business in unprecedented ways, including taking on a 10-percent stake in Intel last August, a “golden share” in US Steel, and a 20-percent cut in chip sales from Nvidia to China. In this instance, the deal also involves one of Trump’s biggest supporters and fundraisers, Larry Ellison, co-founder and CTO of Oracle.
If the reporting is accurate, the fee would represent over 70 percent of the deal’s value, which saw a group of investors take a majority stake in TikTok for $14 billion.
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