Amid ongoing trade tensions between the U.S. and China, President Donald Trump today endorsed the surprising bid by Oracle Corp. to acquire the U.S. operations of short-form video-sharing service TikTok from owner ByteDance Ltd.

The president gave his support for the bid in an interview ahead of a rally in Yuma, Arizona. “I think Oracle is a great company and I think its owner is a tremendous guy, tremendous person,” Trump said. “I think that Oracle would be certainly somebody that could handle it.”

President Trump has long been a supporter of Oracle and its co-founder Larry Ellison and the admiration goes both ways. Rare among the alternately liberal and libertarian tech elite, Ellison, alongside Paypal Inc. co-founder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, are openly Trump supporters. Oracle Chief Executive Officer Safra Catz served on the Trump transition team and was rumored as a possible candidate to become Trump’s national security adviser in 2018.

Coming completely out of left field, news that Oracle was interested in acquiring Oracle broke early Tuesday. The negotiations between Oracle and ByteDance are said to be preliminary and involve the TikTok business in Canada, Australia and New Zealand along with the company’s U.S. operations. Twitter Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are previously reported to have held talks on a potential acquisition of TikTok as well.

Due to concerns that data collected from TikTok was being used by the Chinese government for spying purposes, the Trump administration has given TikTok until Sept. 20 to find a buyer or its U.S. operations or face a potential ban. The ban itself would prohibit “any transaction by any person” with ByteDance.

Exactly what that means for the app’s ongoing existence in the U.S. is still not clear. It could simply mean that U.S. advertisers would be banned from buying ads on the platform, but it also could mean that even downloading the app would be considered a transaction.

In the interview, President Trump also reiterated his view that the U.S. Treasury should take a cut of the deal because his administration is “making it possible.” The president previously made the suggestion that the government should get a cut from the deal in early August, saying at the time that “it would come from the sale, which nobody else would be thinking about but me but that’s the way I think and I think it’s very fair.”

The idea that the government should get a percentage of the sale of TikTok has been derided. As Therese Poletti said in an op-ed for MarketWatch Aug. 4, there are no rules that say the government can command a cut of the deal

The TikTok reports come amid ongoing drama involving the U.S. and China over trade and accusations of spying. The Trump administration has accused the Middle Kingdom of unfair trade practices and spying on U.S. citizens, imposing trade sanctions on Chinese companies in response, most notably Huawei Electronics Co. Ltd.

The U.S. government placed the company on an “Entity List” in May 2019 that effectively prevents it from sourcing components from U.S. firms. A later ban also saw Huawei restricted from accessing U.S. designed technology as well even when the tech is manufactured elsewhere.

More recently, Trump signed an executive order banning Tencent Holdings Inc., the owner of WeChat and investor in various video games companies, applicable starting Sept. 20. Tencent has major holdings in Riot Games Inc., Epic Games Inc. and Activision Blizzard Inc. The company also holds minority stakes in Snap Inc. and Tesla Inc.

The order specifically took aim at WeChat, saying that the messaging app involves “data collection [that] threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”

Photo: Aaron Yoo/Flickr