Donald Trump says “I'm for TikTok, because you need competition”, and “if you don't have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram” and “that's Zuckerberg”
It's late June, and Donald Trump is plotting his next presidency in the gilded offseason isolation of the Mar-a-Lago Club.
Bloomberg
Context & Ripple Effects
Trump’s competition rationale extends his March reversal, when he argued that a TikTok ban would chiefly benefit Facebook; related coverage tied that shift to TikTok’s younger audience and his changing relationship with a ByteDance investor. The later account of his move away from the 2020 ban stance shows the position becoming part of a broader political realignment around the platform.
The significance is less a new TikTok policy than a reframing: TikTok is being treated as a check on Meta’s social-media reach. That framing sits uneasily beside the platform’s unresolved governance and China-link concerns, which later coverage suggests remained central to any proposed ownership solution.
First-order effects
TikTok gains a prominent political defense based on market competition, while Facebook and Instagram are cast as the immediate beneficiaries if the app is removed.
Meta faces a more explicit political narrative that its competitive position could strengthen through TikTok’s exclusion, even as Instagram was already working to recover teen engagement through recommendation changes and creator-focused efforts.
Debate over TikTok can shift from a binary ban question toward whether governance remedies can preserve a meaningful competitor—an issue reflected in the later meeting between Trump and TikTok’s CEO as the company sought to block the law.
Third-order effects
If competition becomes a durable criterion in platform policy, national-security restrictions on major consumer apps may increasingly be evaluated against their effect on incumbent concentration, not only against the targeted app’s risks.
The case illustrates a broader tension in digital governance: market-access rules can reshape consumer-platform competition, potentially making ownership, control, and distribution conditions central to preserving rivalry.
The trend: TikTok policy is becoming a test of whether platform governance can address cross-border risk without further entrenching dominant domestic social networks.
„Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we're no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn't give us anything. Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It's 68 miles away from 🇨🇳". „Taiwan took our chip business from us, I mean, how stupid are we?". https://www.bloomberg.com/... …
Donald Trump paused his discussion of economic issues with Bloomberg BusinessWeek to contemplate the mysteries of who orders regular Coke and who orders Diet Coke. https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image]
Trump Bloomberg interview, behind paywall. Relevant Taiwan quotes below. Not i think anything he hasn't said before re chips and the complexity of defending Taiwan. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Trump seems to be against the CHIPS Act even though it does exactly what he wants, which is bring manufacturing back to the US and get other countries to invest in the US. Here he's talking about Taiwan and presumably TSMC, which is investing $65 billion in US production: [image]
Trump tells Bloomberg he will: > Let Powell serve out his term as Fed chair > Lower corporate tax rate to 15% > Reverse the TikTok ban > Maybe name Jamie Dimon as Treasury secretary > Not pardon himself “Now I am truly experienced,” he tells @BradStone https://www.bloomberg.com/.…
“Taiwan took our chip business from us... I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They're immensely wealthy.” What he wants is for Taiwan to pay US for protection. “I don't think we're any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?”
Here is Trump in an interview published today by Bloomberg Businessweek. Jill Stein and Cornel West voters, hard to know what to say to you at this point. https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image]
'"I don't love sanctions," he [Trump] says. He keeps circling back to William McKinley, who he says raised enough revenue through tariffs during his ... presidency to avoid instituting a federal income tax yet never got the appropriate credit' https://www.bloomberg.com/...
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Trump has seemingly dismissed defending Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion and promised to reverse the ban on TikTok so that it remains under Chinese state control. “Taiwan took our chip business from us. I mean, how stupid are we? They […
The Japanese government views a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan as a survival-threatening situation for Japan. In a new Bloomberg interview, Donald Trump has signaled a lack of commitment to standing up to Chinese aggression if such an invasion took place: [image]
Notable: Trump tells Bloomberg that he supports cutting the corporate tax rate to 15%, down from current 21% level. 15% was the rate he originally sought in 2017 when the GOP tax law was being drafted https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Trump says he wouldn't ban TikTok because he doesn't want to help Meta: “I'm for TikTok, because you need competition,” he says. “If you don't have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram—and that's, you know, that's Zuckerberg.” https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Trump's comments to Bloomberg on Taiwan are sensational but also consistent with his economic nationalist message. What's extraordinary is how much they diverge from the new wave of GOP China hawks who had claimed Trump ushered in a new consensus that held up Taiwan as [image]
NEW: @BW interview with Donald Trump — he questions whether the US has a duty to defend Taiwan from Chinese aggression — suggests it should pay US for protection — says “I don't love sanctions” — and claims the EU has treated the US “violently” on trade https://www.bloomberg.com/…
Of note: TSMC first announced its US plans — at the time, $12 billion — in May 2020, when Trump was president “President Trump's policy agenda has led to a renaissance in American manufacturing,” then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said at the time https://www.bloomberg.com/...
The TikTok ban is a strategic blunder and it was inevitable (if inevitably incoherent) that Biden would get smacked with it like this A terrible-own goal
LIVE NOW: Donald Trump - The @BW interview, with @nancook @JoshuaGreen and @MarioDParker. We went to Mar-a-Lago to talk to the former President about taxes, tariffs, Taiwan, tech and what Trumponomics means for the US and the world. https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image]
Trump on Saudi Arabia and Crown Prince MBS “He likes me, I like him. They're always going to need protection. I'll always protect him” https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image]
In a new @BW interview, Trump is at best lukewarm on US commitments to defend Taiwan “Taiwan took our chip business from us,” he says. “I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They're immensely wealthy” https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image]
This Bloomberg interview with Trump interlaced with footnotes sourcing data and correcting false statements is quite amazing. Super well done. Others need to learn from this - do it for both parties. https://www.bloomberg.com/... [image]