The yearslong battle over TikTok’s ownership has concluded in a $10 billion windfall for the Trump administration. On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that investors in the recently completed deal to create a US-controlled TikTok will pay the government the exorbitant sum for its role in helping broker the transaction. The fee is about 70 percent of the new US TikTok’s $14 billion valuation.

Finalized in January, the TikTok deal concludes a saga that began in 2019, when US politicians began raising alarms about the Chinese-owned app’s potential threat to national security. In 2024, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill that required TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app or face a ban.

But........

© Mother Jones