TikTok Ban Averted As Trump Gives Deal With Oracle, Walmart His 'Blessing'

Video-sharing app TikTok will continue operating in the U.S.

That's according to President Donald Trump who gave the Chinese social network's deal with Oracle Corp. ORCL "his blessing," resolving a dramatic back-and-forth in which his administration labeled it a "national security" risk.

Per The Wall Street Journal, Trump agreed to let TikTok partner with Oracle — as well as Walmart Inc. WMT — as a means to avoiding a ban.

“I have given the deal my blessing, if they get it done that’s OK too, if they don’t that’s fine too,” Trump said at the White House on Saturday.

The deal still needs final approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS).

Trump's decision came a day after TikTok's Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance Ltd., filed a complaint in a Washington federal court challenging the prohibitory measures previously taken by Trump.

Currently TikTok has about 1,400 U.S. employees. It intended to hire 10,000 more employees in the weeks leading up to a ban that would have shut down virtually all of TikTok's U.S. operations starting Sunday, Sept. 20.

This put ByteDance in a bind — agree to a bidder's terms and complete a transaction by the Sunday deadline.

Mcrosoft Corp. MSFT had placed an offer, but ByteDance rejected it. 

ByteDance confirmed that an agreement to rescue TikTok included Oracle's joining forces with Walmart to create a new entity dubbed TikTok Global. This iteration of the startup will be based in the U.S.

The TikTok service, popular among Gen Z, had peeved the Trump administration back in June when the President was looking forward to a political rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Trump campaign had touted more than 1 million possible attendees, only to discover a crowd of about 6,000. That's because TikTok users had orchestrated a prank via phony registrations.

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