Amazon issued a bid letter to Vice President JD Vance and commerce secretary Howard Lutnick just days before the April 5 deadline.
Associated Press reports that Amazon placed a last-minute bid to purchase the popular video-sharing app TikTok before the April 5 deadline for selling the company to an American company.
The offer letter was submitted on April 2 in a letter to Vice President JD Vance and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Under a law upheld by President Donald Trump, TikTok’s Chinese-owned parent company, ByteDance, is required to sell the platform to an approved buyer or risk having it banned in the U.S. President has floated the idea of extending the deadline but said he “expects” a deal to be made on time.
White House officials said, “If and when there is an announcement on TikTok, it will come from President Trump,” however, according to NBC News, he has leaned on Vance and national security adviser Michael Waltz to lead the effort to save the app from going black. Vance, who worked in the venture capital space before entering politics, is trying his hardest to avoid a deadline extension, highlighting that deals involving more capital take a certain amount of time. “Typically, some of these deals that are much smaller and involve much less capital take months to close,” Vance said.
“We’re trying to close this thing by early April. I think that the outlines of this thing will be very clear. The question is whether we can get all the paper done.”
The FBI and the Federal Communications Commission warned that TikTok could share user data like browsing history, location, and biometric identifiers with China’s authoritarian government. However, TikTok defended itself, saying that has never happened and it wouldn’t do so if asked.
The U.S. government has yet to provide evidence of its claims.
After the President said, “We have a lot of potential buyers,” the Trump administration listed “four different groups” they are working with to potentially solidify a sale. Amazon is now on the list with Project Liberty, an organization led by former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, with support from “Shark Tank” investor Kevin O’Leary, Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian, and internet celebrity “Mr. Beast.”
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Source: Black Enterprise
