President Trump used a joint press conference with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on September 18, 2025, to publicly claim credit for brokering the TikTok divestiture and to demand what he called a “fee-plus” from the deal’s new investors. The ask eventually crystallized at $10 billion, a figure with no precedent in U.S. regulatory history and no clear statutory basis. That gap between ambition and legal authority is now the central tension shaping the deal’s future and the broader rules governing foreign investment enforcement.
Trump Frames the U.S. as Deal Broker
During the Starmer press conference, Trump described the federal government not as a regulator enforcing a law but as an active intermediary that deserved compensation. He told reporters the United States should receive a “very substantial payment to the Treasury” for making the transaction possible, language captured in pool reports that also recorded his repeated references to a “brokerage” role. Video of the event released by the White House shows Trump standing alongside Starmer as he reiterates that “we’re the ones making this deal happen,” casting Washington as a kind of mandatory middleman rather than a neutral referee in a national‑security review. The same footage, posted on the administration’s website, frames the appearance as a routine bilateral event but preserves Trump’s off‑the‑cuff description of the U.S. as a dealmaker.
That framing was deliberate: by casting Washington as a deal facilitator rather than a compliance enforcer, the administration positioned itself to extract value that standard regulatory channels do not provide. The White House followed the appearance by publishing a formal policy document titled “Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security”, which laid out the administration’s framework for forcing ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations. That document grounded the divestiture in national‑security concerns, citing the risk of foreign adversary control over data and algorithms, but it did not specify any mechanism for collecting a multi‑billion‑dollar brokerage fee or “fee‑plus” payment. The disconnect matters: the written legal scaffolding supports a forced sale, not a finder’s fee, even as the president publicly spoke as if the United States were entitled to one.
A $10 Billion Price Tag Takes Shape
By early 2026, the scale of the administration’s financial demand became clear. The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration was set to receive $10 billion for its role in the transaction, a figure subsequently confirmed by Reuters reporting that described the payment as a “fee” to the U.S. Treasury tied directly to the TikTok divestiture. According to those accounts, the deal itself closed in January 2026, with a consortium of U.S. and allied‑country investors acquiring TikTok’s American business from ByteDance.
Publicly available details indicate that TikTok’s new investors paid the Treasury a substantial sum at closing, with the remainder of the $10 billion structured as future installments tied to performance and regulatory milestones. People familiar with the agreement told reporters that roughly a quarter of the total (about $2.5 billion) was transferred when the transaction closed, with additional tranches scheduled over several years. While the administration has characterized the arrangement as compensation for safeguarding U.S. users and preserving TikTok’s domestic operations, the payment sits uneasily alongside existing regulatory practice.
For context, the entire CFIUS filing‑fee schedule tops out at $300,000 for the largest transactions, a ceiling laid out in Treasury’s published guidance for foreign‑investment reviews. No existing regulation under 31 CFR Part 800, which governs CFIUS filing fees, contemplates a payment anywhere near the TikTok figure. The $10 billion demand is more than 33,000 times that maximum charge and, unlike standard filing fees, is not calibrated to administrative costs or transaction size in any transparent way. The administration has not publicly cited a specific statutory provision authorizing the charge, and the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, H.R. 7521, contains enforcement and penalty provisions but no language granting the executive branch authority to collect a brokerage‑style fee from a compliant buyer.
The 2020 Precedent That Was Not
This is not the first time Trump has tried to attach a price tag to a TikTok transaction. In August 2020, during his first term, he told reporters that any deal selling TikTok to Microsoft or another firm should include a “very substantial” payment to the Treasury Department. A contemporaneous news account described Trump likening the United States to a landlord demanding “key money” for approving a tenant’s sublease, a metaphor that startled both deal lawyers and national‑security officials. The president’s comments came as Microsoft was exploring an acquisition of TikTok’s U.S. operations and seeking clarity from the administration on conditions for approval.
That earlier effort produced no payment. The CFIUS‑driven process during the first term, documented in a Treasury statement from then‑Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin, ordered ByteDance to divest its acquisition of the U.S. business of musical.ly on national‑security grounds and imposed mitigation measures but did not mention any fee to the Treasury beyond standard filing requirements. An SEC disclosure filed by Microsoft referenced the concept of “key money” that had surfaced in negotiations, underscoring how unusual it was for the U.S. government to be cast as a quasi‑landlord in a corporate takeover. Yet when the 2020 talks collapsed and TikTok remained under ByteDance control, no special Treasury payment materialized. The episode showed that the “key money” idea had been floating in Trump’s orbit for years but had never been executed until the current deal.
Legal Authority Remains an Open Question
The Supreme Court cleared the legal path for a forced sale when it rejected TikTok’s constitutional challenge in TikTok Inc. v. Garland, upholding the divest‑or‑ban framework established by H.R. 7521 and affirming Congress’s power to address foreign‑adversary control of social‑media platforms on national‑security grounds. But the Court’s ruling addressed whether Congress could require divestiture and authorize a ban, not whether the executive branch could condition that divestiture on a side payment to the federal government. The opinion focused on separation‑of‑powers and First Amendment issues, leaving untouched the narrower but consequential question of monetary conditions attached to regulatory approvals.
That distinction is significant. The statute gives the president authority to enforce a ban if ByteDance fails to divest and to oversee the timing and scope of any sale. It does not, on its face, grant authority to negotiate commercial terms on behalf of the Treasury or to convert a national‑security remedy into a revenue‑generating instrument. Critics of the fee structure argue that it effectively turns an enforcement action into a cash‑extraction opportunity, blurring the line between regulation and dealmaking and inviting future administrations to monetize other national‑security reviews. Some former officials have warned that such payments could be challenged as an unconstitutional tax or as an ultra vires act beyond the president’s delegated powers.
Supporters counter that the U.S. government created the conditions that made TikTok’s domestic business viable by refraining from an outright ban and by investing investigative resources into structuring a divestiture that preserved the platform for American users. In this view, compensation for that effort reflects the value of continued market access and deters foreign firms from leveraging U.S. user data without regard for security concerns. They also note that Congress did not explicitly prohibit such payments and that parties to the transaction entered into the agreement voluntarily, with full awareness of the fee obligations.
Neither argument has been tested in court. No buyer or investor has publicly challenged the fee, likely because doing so would risk unraveling the delicate divestiture and inviting renewed scrutiny of TikTok’s ability to operate in the United States. ByteDance, having been forced to sell under the threat of a ban, has little incentive to pick a new legal fight over how the proceeds are allocated between investors and the U.S. government. Absent a direct challenge, the arrangement may remain a political controversy rather than a judicially resolved question.
The longer‑term stakes extend beyond TikTok. If the $10 billion payment stands unchallenged, future presidents may view national‑security reviews as opportunities to extract similar “fees” from companies seeking to enter or remain in the U.S. market. Allies and adversaries alike could respond in kind, demanding payments from American firms in exchange for regulatory approvals, further politicizing cross‑border investment. Conversely, if Congress or the courts move to rein in the practice, they will have to articulate clearer boundaries between legitimate cost‑recovery mechanisms, such as filing fees, and ad hoc demands that resemble transactional tribute. For now, the TikTok divestiture sits at that boundary, testing how far a White House can stretch its leverage in the name of national security before it collides with the limits of law.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
