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Why Microsoft Needs to Walk Away from TikTok

It isn’t worth getting stuck between Donald Trump and the Chinese government.

Jean-Luc Bouchard

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5 min readAug 7, 2020

Welcome to Buy/Sell/Hold, Marker’s weekly newsletter that’s 100% business intelligence and 0% investment advice. Each week, our writers Steve LeVine and Rob Walker make sense of the most important developments in business right now — and give them a Buy for positive trends or clever moves, a Sell for mistakes or missed opportunities, or a Hold if they’re noteworthy but too early to call.

⏰ Is TikTok Worth the Headache? ⏰

The Buy/Sell/Hold Analysis

Microsoft’s potential acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. operations must be the most talked-about deal of the year. Everybody has a point of view, and everybody has an angle — especially President Trump and the Chinese government.

And that’s exactly why Microsoft should walk away from this scheme. Immediately. Acquiring TikTok isn’t worth the hassle, the risks, or the drama.

Crafting this kind of deal would be tricky under any circumstances. But these circumstances are singular: The Trump administration, on the theory that TikTok could collect user data for the Chinese government, has asserted that TikTok will be “banned” in the United States unless its…

In less than 4 years this administration has created 100 years worth of damage to the US and our reputation in the world. It will take decades to undo what has been done, if at all. This move is not just about TikTok, this is a warm war between two…

Could someone ASK the question? I don’t expect an answer, but could you at least ask. If TikTok such a heinous spying app sending info Beijing why would such surveillance tech be OK in the hands of Microsoft? America is fine with corporations spying on its citizens?

In a Q&A last week he compared the payment to "Key Money".

“It’s a little bit like the landlord/tenant; without a lease the tenant has nothing, so they pay what’s called ‘key money,’ or they pay something,” Trump said.

WILD. The President of the…

Why Microsoft Needs to Walk Away from TikTok

It isn’t worth getting stuck between Donald Trump and the Chinese government.

⏰ Is TikTok Worth the Headache? ⏰

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Published in Marker

Written by Jean-Luc Bouchard

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