Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one of the biggest critics of the presence of Chinese telecom and tech in the U.S., said the government should reject oracle's proposed purchase of TikTok's U.S. operations because it still leaves the Chinese app's parent, ByteDance, in the picture.
Oracle reportedly beat out Microsoft Monday (Sept. 14) in a bidding War for a TikTok deal.
President Trump has issued an executive order banning the video social media app unless it is sold to a U.S. company, but Hawley said the Oracle proposal does not fill the bill and should be rejected by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
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Hawley said Oracle's partnership with ByteDance "allows for continued Chinese Communist Party control of TikTok, putting American data at risk and violating President Trump’s executive order."
"[A]n ongoing ‘partnership’ that allows for anything other than the full emancipation of the TikTok software from potential Chinese Communist Party control is completely unacceptable, and flatly inconsistent with the President’s Executive Order of August 6," Hawley wrote Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
"CFIUS should promptly reject any Oracle-ByteDance collaboration and send the ball back to ByteDance’s court so that the company can come up with a more acceptable solution. ByteDance can still pursue a full sale of TikTok, its code, and its algorithm to a U.S. company, so that the app can be rebuilt from the ground up to remove any trace of CCP influence."
