Microsoft's and Walmart's Bid for TikTok

By L. Thompson

As most of us have heard, Donald Trump has continued his threats to ban TikTok in the USA. The distrust towards ByteDance, the Chinese company which owns the video sharing app, has not only alarmed the USA, but Australia and India as well. Countries are concerned because users' data are being collected by TikTok, and risk "landing in China's Communist Party's hands," as stated by Mike Pompeo. 
In order to stop this potential ban, Microsoft and Walmart have stepped up and offered to buy TikTok's US operations. TikTok has been given until September 15th to sell its US arm to an American company or face a ban in the country. 
ByteDance is currently discussing with Microsoft and other US corporations as it tries to find a buyer for its operations in the US. Microsoft is looking into acquiring them in the USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. This deal could cost Microsoft anywhere between 10 billion USD to 30 billion USD.
Walmart is another potential buyer of TikTok's US arm. They announced they will team up with Microsoft to make a bid for the US operations. A Walmart spokesperson stated that they "are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of US TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of US government regulators".
 
 
https://www.businessinsider.com/tiktok-microsoft-acquisition-valuation-30-billion-bytedance-avoid-us-ban-2020-8 
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-53933534  
https://g1.globo.com/mundo/noticia/2020/07/21/por-que-o-governo-trump-estuda-banir-o-tiktok-dos-eua.ghtml