the US government demand a cut?

The American tech giant has been in discussions with ByteDance,

the Chinese owner of the popular video sharing platform,

for the last few weeks over a potential acquisition.

Those talks began after Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok

altogether, warning that the data of American TikTok users

might not be safe in the hands of a Chinese-owned company.

Now, the two parties are hoping to come

to some sort of agreement by mid-September,

a deadline made even more urgent by Mr Trump's latest threat

to cut TikTok off from any US transactions in 45 days time

if it is not done by then.

But one of the major hurdles here

will be Donald Trump's repeated insistence

that the Treasury should get some kind of payment

for helping engineer the sale in the first place.

Lawyers and policymakers that I talked to in Washington

have no idea how the mechanics of such a payment would work.

It is not unprecedented for the Treasury

to demand a one-off payment from a private company,

but that usually happens when the private company is asking

something of the US taxpayer.

For example, if there is a bailout, there is often a fee

associated with this.

This, however, is not a bailout situation.

This is a situation where the US government

has engineered a sale by threatening

to ban one company altogether.

One lawyer I spoke to said this doesn't so much

resemble a fee as a shakedown.

Now, Microsoft themselves say that they

are committed to providing economic benefit to the US

and, particularly, to the Treasury.

But what they probably mean by that

is some kind of promise over future tax payments.

I doubt they're thinking of a single, one-off fee

to the Treasury.

If the Treasury does demand such a payment,

however, I would expect that that

could kick off a long and protracted legal battle.