Is a US-China TikTok Deal Near?

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00:00Um, let's get in a little bit to what's been going on today. So President Xi Jinping says

00:06China's position on TikTok is clear. However, President Trump thanked China for TikTok approval.

00:15Oh, reading between the lines, are we any closer to a deal at all? Everything just seems so

00:20uncertain. I feared you would ask me about this, Lianne, and I don't get to try and come up with

00:26some sort of insight. This really caught me by surprise because we had the Treasury Secretary,

00:31Scott Besant, meeting in Spain with a number of other luminaries earlier this week. He said on

00:37Tuesday that a deal was done. He didn't want to preempt an announcement. He wanted Donald Trump

00:42to announce it. What we got here is a mishmash. I have absolutely no idea what is going on here.

00:50I think that what we can assume, reading between the lines, is the fate of TikTok has become

00:56intertwined with a whole lot of other economic issues. What is China's attitude toward a couple

01:03of tech companies? China recently, earlier this week, dropped an antitrust investigation into Google,

01:10but announced one into NVIDIA. Weirdly, it announced an antitrust in that investigation

01:16into NVIDIA, but it had already improved. This feels like leverage to me. And of course,

01:22we still have lots of uncovered things in trade talks. So I think the fate of TikTok has been

01:30lumped in with all of these other unresolved issues. The immediacy of resolving TikTok,

01:36though, has gone away. Earlier this week, the government extended yet again a congressional mandate

01:42that said that there had to be a resolution by Wednesday. The two sides now have until December

01:48to sort this out. And remember, a year ago, actually less than a year ago, but in January,

01:55it was meant to be TikTok was under U.S. ownership or it went dark, right? That has been extended four

02:01times. And now there are still a couple more months to play with. So you and I will be discussing this

02:05at a later date, I am sure.