Trump claims the US is about to get a tremendous fee for taking TikTok out of China

A 10 percent stake in Intel, 15 percent of Nvidia’s China sales, a “golden share” of Nippon Steel — what price will Trump extract next in exchange for favorable treatment? Well, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump Administration is “expected to collect a multibillion-dollar fee” in exchange for negotiating a US takeover of TikTok’s US business.

That fee will come from TikTok’s US investors, including private equity firm Silver Lake and Oracle, with the new group getting half of TikTok, while TikTok China’s parent company ByteDance would still have under 20 percent.

Yesterday, Trump said that “the United States is getting a tremendous fee-plus, I call it a ‘fee-plus,’ just for making the deal.” But Trump says a lot of things that need dissecting, and it was absolutely unclear today whether there’s even a TikTok deal or not.

So to see the WSJ reporting that “people familiar with the matter” think a deal might not only get approved, but also see billions of dollars flow from US companies into the Trump Administration’s coffers, sounds like something to be aware of. Why would those companies pay Trump’s government billions unless they think they’ll make even more?