"Is This Why They Stepped In?"... Trump Administration Earns 15 Trillion Won in Fees from TikTok Sale

Trump Administration Generates Revenue by Intervening in Corporate Deals

The Donald Trump administration, which mediated the sale of TikTok's U.S. operations, is set to receive $10 billion (approximately 15 trillion won) in fees from investors.

On the 13th (local time), The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing multiple sources, reported that investors who acquired a stake in TikTok—including Oracle, private equity fund Silver Lake, and UAE investment firm MGX—have agreed to pay these fees to the U.S. government.

Back in January, the investors had already paid about $2.5 billion (approximately 3.74 trillion won) to the Treasury Department upon completing the stake acquisition from TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. They plan to continue making additional payments until the total reaches $10 billion.

Regarding the TikTok acquisition agreement last September, President Trump declared, “The United States is receiving an enormous additional fee.” It is unprecedented for the government to receive such a large fee for facilitating the success of a transaction like a sale. Considering that U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance valued TikTok’s U.S. business unit at $14 billion (about 20.986 trillion won), the fee received by the U.S. administration amounts to more than 70% of the business unit’s value. Even compared to typical deals, where investment banks acting as advisors receive less than 1% of the deal value as a fee, this is an exceptionally large sum.

However, administration officials maintain that the fee is justified, as President Trump not only ensured the continuation of TikTok’s service in the U.S. and addressed Congressional security concerns, but also led negotiations with China to finalize the deal. Some also argued that the valuation of TikTok’s U.S. business unit was set unreasonably low.

Earlier, in January, ByteDance separated TikTok's U.S. business into a limited liability company (LLC) called ‘TikTok U.S. Data Security (USDS) Joint Venture’ and sold a majority stake to a consortium including Oracle. ByteDance retains a 19.9% stake in the joint venture and is expected to take a share of the profits as well.

Meanwhile, since last year, the Trump administration has intervened in major corporate transactions to generate revenue. It was agreed to receive a certain portion of semiconductor sales by Nvidia and AMD to China as fees. In addition, the government secured about a 10% stake in Intel in exchange for subsidies, and also obtained a “golden share” that grants veto rights over corporate decisions during Nippon Steel’s acquisition of US Steel.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.