Trump says Microsoft in talks to buy TikTok

US President Donald Trump has said Microsoft is in discussions to acquire TikTok and that he would like to see a “bidding war” over the sale of the social media app

When asked by reporters whether the US tech giant was preparing a bid, Trump replied: “I would say yes” – before adding that there was “great interest in TikTok” from several companies.

Both Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden have been trying for years to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, to sell its US operations on national security grounds.

It comes as Trump signed an executive order last week to delay a Biden Administration ban on TikTok that briefly took the app offline for its 170m users in the United States.

Despite granting TikTok a 75-day reprieve from the ban, Trump had been the first president to start pressuring ByteDance to sell its app.

In August 2020, ByteDance approached Microsoft as a possible buyer – something which the US company’s chief executive later described as “the strangest thing”.

Later, TikTok chose rival Oracle as a potential partner – although that deal also never happened.

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