Analyzing TikTok’s New Deal With Walmart and Oracle

Over the last few months, United States President Donald Trump has been outspoken about the operations of TikTok in the USA, with his concerns being related mainly to national security. At the climax of the controversy, he suggested that it would be beneficial to ban TikTok from operating in the USA or force them to sell their US division to an American company. With over 100 million users in the USA already on the platform, this was a valid concern by President Trump.

However, this whole saga took an interesting twist after Oracle and Walmart made a deal with TikTok to run its USA operations. With this deal, a new US company called TikTok Global has been created to manage all the US TikTok operations and data of the USA citizens. In their press release, Oracle and Walmart said that this new company (TikTok Global) would have a board of 5 members, with 4 of them being from the USA. 

Based on this deal’s available details, it is still unclear whether there will be no USA data crossing into China. Oracle confirmed that all the USA data would be stored on Oracle’s Cloud computing platform. They will also review the source code of TikTok to make sure it doesn’t contain any algorithms that could smuggle US data to Mainland China.  

Donald Trump’s reaction to the deal

In his reaction, last Saturday, Trump said, “I have given the deal my blessing, and if they get it done, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s okay, too.”  He, however, went ahead to say that if they find any loopholes in this deal regarding how USA data is managed, they will not be approving the agreement. This simply means that the fate of TikTok in the USA will mainly depend on how much control Oracle and Walmart have regarding the operations of this company in the US.

The many unknowns 

The two parties (Walmart/Oracle and ByteDance) involved in this deal have both released contradicting statements regarding how much stake they have in the new company (TikTok Global). ByteDance claims TikTok Global is a 100% owned subsidiary of ByteDance. On the other hand, Oracle’s executive vice president Ken Glueck says ByteDance doesn’t have a stake in this USA’s viral app’s operations.

The biggest concern that many people have now is whether this deal will rule out China’s possibility of getting access to data of the USA citizens that use TikTok. We hope that ByteDance, Oracle, and Walmart will finally clear the air about the new company (TikTok Global) and how USA data will be safely kept within the USA’s boundaries.

Final thoughts

This new deal has brought back some breathing to many individuals and businesses using TikTok in the USA. Despite the few unknowns, we now know that TikTok is most likely to continue its operations in the USA. Their fate will now depend on how well Oracle, Walmart, and ByteDance work together to fulfill the US government’s demands.