Yesterday was a busy day for the newly (re)minted president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Following through on a wide range of campaign promises, he signed dozens of executive orders, including:

• Declaring a national emergency at our southern border

• Restarting his previous Remain in Mexico policy for asylum seekers

• Ending birthright citizenship

• Declaring a national energy emergency to better facilitate his “drill, baby, drill” plans

• Recognizing just two genders: male and female

• Terminating our financial ties with the World Health Organization (to the tune of $500 million per year)

• Pardoning or commuting the January 6 defendants’ sentences

• Changing the “Gulf of Mexico” to the “Gulf of America”

There’s a lot of controversy surrounding those orders, with the birthright citizenship being legally challenged already. And even Fox News is decrying the January 6 decision, to say nothing of the usual sources of criticism.

But for my part today, I want to focus on President Trump’s TikTok order. Because it might be a much bigger decision than any of us realize.

Last spring, Biden signed a law mandating the social media platform’s owner, the Chinese-owned and operated ByteDance, either sell it to an American entity by January 19 or cease American operations altogether. This set off a series of legal challenges that went all the way to the Supreme Court earlier this month.

As we found out last week, the justices there quickly and unanimously ruled against TikTok. They all agreed that Congress and Biden had every right to shut it down on suspicions that China was using the company to collect data on American citizens.

But yesterday, President Trump – known far and wide for his aggressive stances against China – signed an executive order in ByteDance’s favor. Or did he?

Perhaps there’s more to understand than first meets the eye.

Trump’s Seeming Flip-Flop on TikTok

If you read my Wide Moat Daily from last Monday, you might remember me calling the TikTok question “huge.” Does “the U.S. government have the right to ban an entire [social media] platform like this?”

It seemed like a very weighty debate.

On the one hand, there’s the enormously important issue of free speech. Then again, the federal government is also Constitutionally commanded to protect its people from both internal and external hostile forces. So if ByteDance really is sending TikTok data to the Chinese Communist Party, doesn’t the U.S. have every reason to act?

Trump even said during his inauguration speech that, “As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do.” But then he seemingly defied that very concept by allowing TikTok to keep operating in the U.S. as-is for at least the next 75 days.

You also have to remember that Trump seemed to espouse a different stance during his first term. In August 2020, he accused the app of amassing information about its American users.

“These risks are real,” he wrote in an executive order at the time. “This data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information – potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

But then a federal judge blocked that decision, and Biden dropped it altogether when he took office. So it very much appears that both sides were playing politics…

Right up until what Trump said yesterday when reporters pressed him on his change of heart. It’s given me much more clarity on his intentions.

And those intentions could end up benefiting the American economy intensely.

Breaking Down Trump’s Newfound TikTok Stance

Trump made several defenses of his TikTok decision delay yesterday. And one, I’ll be the first to admit, isn’t the soundest all by itself:

Because I got to use it. And remember, TikTok is largely about kids. Young kids. If China is going to get information about young kids out of it, to be honest, I think we have bigger problems than that.

That’s the kind of “Trumpism” that’s perfect for pulling apart.

More compelling is his argument that, “They make all sorts of things in China” yet “nobody ever complains about that” outside of TikTok. Previous administrations haven’t questioned our reliance on rare earth metals or medical supplies from this same not-always-friendly country.

Why is that, when both resources have immense national security implications? That topic might require an entire article by itself.

But here’s the part that really got me thinking:

TikTok is worthless. Worthless if I don’t approve it… If I do the deal, it’s worth maybe a trillion dollars…

If I do the deal for the United States, then I think we should get half. In other words, I think the U.S. should be entitled to get half of TikTok. And congratulations, TikTok has a good partner, and that would be worth, you know, could be $500 billion or something.

When I heard Trump say that, it all clicked into place. He’s negotiating with China to further his mission of bringing business operations back to the U.S. Banning TikTok outright does the opposite.

There are currently millions of users who make or enhance their living on TikTok through direct channels or advertising. And many of those people are American.

Of course, the biggest benefits overwhelmingly go to the Chinese right now. But what if Trump could turn that more in our favor, both financially and logistically?

That seems to be exactly what he’s shooting for. And I think he’s more than capable of making it happen considering how China has everything to lose in this newest negotiation.

That’s why I’m now looking to get my own TikTok channel up and running in the next few months… and why I’m more bullish than ever on one particular real estate investment trust sector I’m going to fill you in on tomorrow.

Stay tuned to hear all about it.

Regards,

Brad Thomas
Editor, Wide Moat Daily

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