TikTok Makes a Deal: Fmr. TikTok CEO & Signals from Beijing 12/19/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. TikTok's reached a deal. After years of scrutiny, the social media app avoids a ban in the United States thanks to a joint venture we kind of saw coming. Former TikTok CEO Kevin Mayer. I've heard that the algorithm, although still owned and the code being owned by China, it's going to be licensed. And our China reporter Eunice Yun. The signaling that we're getting in the state media is that this has Beijing's approval. Then we dive into the world of wine with Food & Wine's Ray Isle. Tariffs, non-alcoholic demand, and expensive tastes.

0:43Affordable is in the eye of the beholder. His recommendations for your holiday tables,$24 and up. You must be one of the most popular party guests to have this time of year. Plus, the president's real-life apprentice for next Fed chair continues with candidate interviews. And a favorite book of ours makes it onto another high-profile reading list. Who did this? Are you responsible for this? I did not. 1929, one of Barack Obama's picks for best books of the year. You can look at Amazon sales and you can see things moving around. It's Friday, December 19th, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Stand Becky by in three, two, one, cue, please.

1:28Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Squawk Box right here on CNBC. We're live from the Nasdaq market site in Times Square. I'm Becky Quick along with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Joe is out today. Hello. Happy Friday, everybody. Me time by TikTok, reaching a deal to keep operating in the United States, according to a memo from TikTok CEO to U.S. employees, the social media company, and its parent organization, ByteDance, have signed agreements with three investors to form a new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The so-called managing investors are Oracle, Silver Lake, and the United Arab Emirates firm MGX. According to the memo, they and other investors will hold 50 % of the new joint venture.

2:0830 % will be held by affiliates of the existing ByteDance investor group. About 20 % will be retained by ByteDance itself. and the U.S. business will be governed by a new seven-member majority American board of directors. Oracle will function as an investor and also what they're calling the security partner with sensitive U.S. data being stored in Oracle's U.S.-based cloud data centers. And the memo says that TikTok's algorithm will be retrained on American user data. The deal is scheduled to be completed by January 22nd. So a soap opera that began probably now two and a half, about two and a half years ago, I want to say.

2:51It was the Biden administration. And I think that there was supposed to be originally like a, what was it, 75 or 150 day? 60 days maybe. It was like supposed to happen almost immediately and then of course didn't and it's been prolonged. Here we are. Here we are. Open AI is reportedly looking to raise as much as$100 billion for its expansion plans, which could value the company as high as, ready for this,$830 billion. So we're getting close to the trillion-dollar mark. The Wall Street Journal saying that the earliest fundraising round would be completed at the end of the first quarter of this coming year.

3:24And then OpenAI expected to draw in financing from sovereign wealth funds as well. Earlier in the week, the information reported that OpenAI has held early talks with investors about raising funds at a$750 billion valuation. So those numbers keep going up. Who did this? Are you responsible for this? I did not. Do I have to read this myself? Well, actually, let me read this. This is like a very... Okay, let me read this. You can read it, because I can't. I didn't know that some producer was going to do this to us. All right, well, this is something worth celebrating. Former President Barack Obama out with his list of favorite books from 2025.

4:06And guess who's on the list? They include Michael Lewis's book, Who is Government? His wife, Michelle Obama's book, The Look, and Andrew Ross Sorkin's 1929. So there you have it, folks. Barack Obama himself recommending Andrew's book. And I think it worked, right? Yeah, I was so surprised. I mean, I, by the way, I look at his list every year. But I think his list is influential and it actually added to sales. You can look at Amazon sales and you can see things moving around. Absolutely. So, Mr. President, former president of the United States, thank you. And congratulations, Andrew. We should have saved the champagne for this before they took it away.

4:44I didn't know that they would mention this on TV. So there you go. Thank you. We have some breaking news on the race for the Fed chair job. Our senior economics reporter, Steve Leisman, joins us with the details. Really? Good morning, Becky. senior administration officials telling CNBC that Fed Governor Chris Waller had a, quote, strong interview with President Trump in which the two discussed the labor market in depth and how to jumpstart job creation. The interview took place in the president's residence and concluded shortly before the president stepped to the podium and addressed the nation on the economy on national television Wednesday night.

5:19Treasury Secretary Scott Besson, Chief of Staff Suzy Wall and Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavido also attended the interview. That's a sign Waller's candidates he's being taken seriously, though the officials declined to say if he's the front runner or where he stood in the whole race for the Fed chair job. CMBC also learned BlackRock's Rick Reader will be interviewed at Mar-a-Lago for the Fed chair job in the last week of the year. The officials said that leaves four candidates, including NEC director Kevin Hassett, the favorite for the job in the prediction markets, and former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, who had been previously interviewed by the president.

5:51The officials added that Fed governor and vice chair of bank Supervisor Michelle Bowman no longer being considered for the job. Now, the official said the conversation about jobs with Waller showed criticism was misplaced that the president was seeking a candidate based on the criteria that the next Fed chair would follow the president's orders on race. They said the president's interest in the interviews with candidates was broad based across a series of economic issues. On a lighter note, the president was said to have been seriously impressed when informed that Governor Waller could bench press 350 pounds.

6:23You know, you always bring us the details that matter. And that's a riddle. I'm not saying that sarcastically. Like, those are like those little details that bring you inside the room. I heard in awe was what I heard. In awe. In awe. I heard that from a separate source. I've seen Waller. I'm actually surprised and impressed by that, too. Yeah. Yeah. Governor Waller has a pretty strict workout regime, is my understanding. Okay. So all of these reports, all of this kind of what we're seeing now with these interviews, is all to counter what the president himself has repeatedly said, that he had somebody in mind that he knew who it was going to be.

7:01So that and the idea that the president wanted somebody who was only going to listen to him on rates, they're definitely emphasizing that there's more interest, more discussion on broader economic topics in these interviews than just are you going to listen to me. We continue to hear that. And look, this is not to to counter reporting that's been out there. This is to counter what the president himself has said. Becky, I think you're something that has amused me, that sometimes the president is not his own best friend. Yeah. Right. Like when he sat there with the affordability stuff in the background that he called affordability a hoax.

7:38You could imagine people around the president kind of cringing in those situations, you know, when they thought they were. Remember the great constant theme of infrastructure week that was going to be an infrastructure week and never quite was. Sometimes the president is not his own best friend, but we can report with certainty that they did discuss jobs. It wasn't all about how you're going to lower rates and listen to me. Is the president himself not locked in? Is that the message you're getting back, that he's not locked in on one candidate and he's still waiting and going through these interviews?

8:10And we will see where he feels a month. Yes, that is. You can read this online, Becky, and so can viewers, by the way, that this is a serious process following. Look, I was surprised a couple of weeks ago when the president of Air Force One said, I know who it is. And then we were able to report that interviews were canceled. I don't know if you remember, but I guess it was back in October. I was able to break the story of the process that Treasury Secretary Scott Besson laid out. Yeah. And it looked like one that, by the way, is both real and symbolic. Right. Because this pick for Fed chair is something being watched down the road at Wall Street, but 5000 miles away in every financial center anywhere around the world in Japan.

8:52Not only who is picked, but the how it's picked matters a lot. It always has. I've done, I think, four or five of these processes over the past several decades. It just it reminds me a lot of what we're hearing with Warner Brothers Discovery and the bids that have come in for this. is the president actually in the camp of the Ellison bid from Skydance, right, or from Paramount Skydance, or is he saying, no, I'm not in that camp, and if it's Netflix and it's American Company, I'm good with that too. I'm good for whatever shows up. A lot of this is processed to undo things that have been said, again, not by the press or anybody around him, but by the president himself in front of cameras.

9:31That is an accurate point, Becky, and I think the other thing is that when they are now back on track with this process. The president is sitting down with these candidates. He's going to sit down with Rick Reeder. OK. And I don't know. I think Wall Street probably appreciates hearing that. I think they're probably getting a good. Yeah. Especially, I think, the Waller Reeder people are because I think there's a lot of. And you don't think I mean, there are these other people who speculate this is all not theater, but, you know, that he's got the selection, but that he also wants to suggest that there is a process so that he can say that he's looked at everybody.

10:05You know, Andrew, if that's the case, they're going through an awful lot of hoops to jump. It's a lot of trouble to waste with the most important person in the planet. You know, you get these key people that are running the U.S. government in a room to talk to a guy for several, however long, I couldn't determine how long it went. For theater, I don't know. I'd get mad if I was wasting hours and hours of my time, and I'm not the president. Yeah, I mean, if the president wants to cut it off, it will be his choice. And I know people around him don't know who he's going to pick yet. Right. I do. But are you saying he doesn't know who he's going to?

10:35I don't think, you know, I don't I don't think so. I think he wants to meet with these people and he wants to to talk with them. And look, there's another sign in all this that the president is maybe a little more concerned about what's happening in the job market. The job numbers have not been good. Right. Right. And he needs to turn his attention to that. And and they need to figure that out. I just want to go back to this. It's a 350 pound bench press, not a deadlift. This is a bench press. I'm not smart enough or spend enough time in the gym to know. 350-pound bench press, that is like really pushing weight.

11:07I'm not saying a deadlift. By the way, a deadlift of 350 pounds is a lot, too. I'm just thinking to myself, that's throwing around a lot of weight. Now we're going to get all these texts and tweets and stuff from people who really do this stuff. He's like a big guy. He's not that big. He doesn't look as big as. I was going to say, 350 pounds benching. No, no, that's not what impresses me. Okay. What impresses me is 350 pounds and expertise in monetary policy and the economy and getting inflation and interest rates right. That's what impresses me. It's like you with fishing. Exactly. Exactly. And guitar.

11:43Thank you, sir. My pleasure. And the NASDAQ and the New York Stock Exchange will not be altering their trading hours on December 24th and 26th. Boo. Are you going with boo? By the way, because now they want to expand trading 24 hours a day. That announcement coming after President Trump signed an executive order to close the government on those days. The stock market will close at 1 p.m. Eastern time on Christmas Eve and operate as a regular full trading day on the 26th. And yes, we will be with you right here on CNBC throughout all of it. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, finally a deal reached to onshore TikTok in the U.S., how China is reacting, and the thoughts of a longtime media executive who once ran the company, Disney and Candle Media vet Kevin Mayer.

12:39You have a very trustworthy American corporation, Oracle, running the algorithm, retraining the algorithm, managing the data flow, making sure data access is limited only to the U.S., checks all the boxes. We'll be right back.

12:58Welcome back. This is Squawk Pod. Up and Andrew, Q. You're watching Squawk Box on CNBC. I'm Andrew Ross Sorkin, along with Becky Quick. Joe is off today, but we've got so much going on right now. As we mentioned earlier, TikTok CEO telling employees that its parent company, ByteDance, has reached an agreement to create a new U.S. joint venture that will hold the U.S. version of the app, And that will be majority owned by U.S. investors. Kevin Meyer is the founder and co-CEO of Candle Media. He's also the former CEO of TikTok and the former COO of ByteDance. And CNBC's Beijing bureau chief Eunice Yoon is here as well.

13:38She joins us here at the NASDAQ this morning as well. So, folks, let's run through this. First of all, Kevin, what do you think? What does this do? Does it meet the security regulations that Congress laid out? Well, it seems to me, in looking at the deal from what I can tell, it does meet that. ByteDance seems to be, and Chinese ownership seems to be, below the 20 % threshold. You have a very trustworthy American corporation, Oracle, running the algorithm, retraining the algorithm, managing the data flow, making sure data access is limited to the US, data access is limited only to the US, checks all the boxes.

14:15And I think in addition to that, you still have ByteDance helping out with the commercial operations in terms of ad sales and e-commerce and the rest. That just seems like a low security risk, but a good way to make sure their value is there, the top line, the bottom line are driven the right way. I think it's a good deal. Eunice, what do you think from the perspective of China at this point? Obviously, if this is something that solves the security issues the United States was looking for, is it a situation that the Chinese can live with too? It looks like it. I mean, there hasn't been any official Chinese government response, except for a very boilerplate statement from the foreign ministry where they said that Beijing's position is consistent and clear.

14:53But the signaling that we're getting in the state media is that this has Beijing's approval. And there's a lot of citation of a pro-Beijing professor who is saying that this deal is in line with Chinese law. And they're saying specifically that this is not a sale of the algorithm, that Oracle is only reviewing, they said, the algorithm, so there isn't any way that they would be able to copy or steal it, and that ByteDance is the single largest shareholder in the JV and that TikTok will remain, they say, 100 % owned by ByteDance. Kevin, what do you make of that? This whole thing has revolved around the algorithm, about who owns the algorithm, who controls the algorithm, how the algorithm can work.

15:37And for so long, there was an argument being made that if you didn't control the algorithm, you couldn't actually train on it in some other way and change things from a security perspective. Yeah, well, it seems, Andrew, to me that there was some positioning going on here. The thing that I liked the least about this announcement was that there was no official Chinese government approval as part of it. But it sounds from Yunus that that is being positioned in that market. it. I've heard that the algorithm, although still owned and the code being owned by China, it's going to be licensed and there'll be a new instance of it.

16:17The code will be transported to Oracle servers in the US and retrained. And though the code elements will be the same, the retraining is what causes the algorithm to suggest the various videos on the For You feed. So I do think the training of it, the housing of it, and the fact that the data that would be used to train the algorithm for U.S. users is only going to be captured in the U.S. and stored in the U.S. and viewable only in the U.S. I think it meets most of the requirements. And I do believe, you know, there's some face-saving that has to happen. The Chinese government has to spin it a slightly different way.

16:49U.S. government a slightly different way. But in total, seems like it meets the requirements. How do you see the success of TikTok going forward? I mean, one of the questions at some point was whether you'd have to reload, for example, the app onto itself entirely, whether that would actually create churn at that point in terms of bringing advertising into the platform in ways that doesn't exist today or ways to actually make more money because this has never been seen, interestingly, despite the valuation, as some kind of shocking business. Well, look, I think it's set up for success from a commercial perspective.

17:28I think the ads will continue. There are ads now, by the way, a fair number of ads. There are some. Whether that changes. Yeah, I don't think it is. Because also, as I understand it, ByteDance will continue to oversee ad sales, the commercialization of the app in terms of e-commerce and the other ways that it's optimized and monetized from the users. I do think that the app download is probably going to be a bit of a non-issue. Apps are updated in background all the time on phones and mobile devices through iOS and through the Google Play. I just don't think that's going to be a big friction and a moment for people to abandon the app.

18:09I think it's going to be pretty smooth sailing. It's going to be interoperable as it is today across the world, again, with the data being encapsulated in the U.S. Looks like a seamless approach. Looks like it's going to work to me. I have one other question. Do you see, I mean, is it possible that this company could ever get sold to another player in the future? I mean, when you think about sort of M &A down the line, given the way this is structured. I guess it's conceivable. You have a bunch of different owners with different goals in mind. You have, you know, Silver Lake, you have MGX, the Abu Dhabi private equity fund.

18:44You have Oracle, which is obviously a strategic investor at this point. You have the 30 % of ownership that's still owned by the original non-China investors in ByteDance and ByteDance itself. So to get all those folks aligned on the right vision to have an M &A event in the future, relatively difficult to have a feeling. Probably going to operate as a joint venture for a very, very long time. And hopefully ByteDance itself will go public as a result of this. Hey, Kevin, I know we got to go, but one last final question for you. It's sort of a curveball. Warner Brothers Discovery, you're in the media business.

19:18Who do you think ends up with it? If I had to make a call, it's a must-have for Paramount. Probably Paramount. Paramount. So you think Paramount comes back with a bigger deal, bigger offer? I do. Eunice, we have to run. Last thing we should watch for? We've just got a few seconds left. Oh, I think that we're going to have to see exactly whether or not the Chinese government, at the end of the day, is going to really give that official approval. Eunice, thank you very much. Great to see you. Kevin, thank you. Kevin, thank you. I'm honored to be here. Thank you. Still to come on Squawk Pod. We're celebrating the holiday season with Ray Isle, Food & Wine's executive wine editor.

19:57His recs for your table, regardless of budget. And there's even something for guests trying to drink less. I get pitched a new non-alcoholic wine probably several times a week. The category is just exploding. The latest in the wine biz, right after this.

20:17You're listening to Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Becky Quick. Christmas is less than a week away, and joining us right now with some tips on what to serve on the table this year is Ray Isle, our old friend who's here from executive. He's the executive wine editor at Food & Wine, and Ray, you do this for us every year. I love doing this. This is great. Thanks for having me back. Well, we love having to come in. Trying to get us, you know, a little tipsy at 6.20 in the morning. It's my job. It's what I do for the world. I was actually thinking about it. How do you do your job? Because I don't know how I'm even going to take a sip of these.

20:49Okay, well, normally I'm not up at 6.20 doing my job. I will say that. But, you know, the classic thing is if you're in the business and you're tasting, you know, I'll set up 20 Chateauneuf de Fops to taste. You spit them out? I spit, yeah. You spit them out. So you don't actually drink a worship. But 20, even with the spitting, has got to be the equivalent of how many glasses? It's, you know, it's not that much because you really do not ingest at that point. and you get a little bit of osmosis. Your tongue gets loaded, though. Your tongue gets loaded. Your palate gets exhausted. I bet. It seems like it'd be tough to go through.

21:21But it's also, you know, it's a learned skill, I guess. You've been working at it for a while, and we appreciate your expertise. Let's talk a little bit first about what's happening in the business world and how that's impacting wine. Tariffs have been the big story. In fact, you even went to the Supreme Court to hear their arguments. I did, because one of the plaintiffs in the case is a wine importer, actually, New York-based wine importer. And I went to the tariff hearings, which is kind of great to go to the Supreme Court. It was fascinating because what I found particularly surprising was the conservative justices, particularly Gorsuch, were much more critical of the administration's argument than I expected them to be.

22:01Maybe they like their wine. And they like their wine. And they're also very wary of kind of the handing over of what's a congressional power, theoretically taxation to the executive branch. There's a whole argument about are these tariffs regulatory or are they a tax on American citizens? For instance, the guy who owns this wine importing company is paying, you know, the tariffs are assessed when the wine comes into the port of entry. The port even sells. He's getting nailed with some pretty steep fees. As a result, what you've done looking through this year is looked for some homegrown versions that might be a little cheaper.

22:43Yeah, homegrown or alternatives in a sense. So, you know, so this first, the sparkling wine, Gratien & Meyer, is a sparkling wine from the Loire Valley in France. You can't touch actual champagne from Champagne in France for under 50 bucks. And this is about 20. And it's a sparkling Chin-in Blanc from the Loire. I think it's a terrific, you know, great party pour. Great party pour. It's great at 6.20 in the morning. Not great if you just brushed your teeth. Wine's like orange juice. Really not good after brushing your teeth. I haven't had any coffee yet, so it's okay from this perspective. I'm mixing coffee and right now.

23:23I've got both going here. Yeah, as prices, you know, are going to creep up thanks to these tariffs for imported wine, you start looking for some interesting alternatives. No, I'm not a huge fan of champagne. I've told you that before. But this isn't bad because it's a little crispy. Yeah, it's a little crispy. It's a little light. It's kind of nice. You know, it's funny. One thing we're not trying that I did bring is non-alcoholic spark. That's what I was going to ask you about this year. It feels like there is a trend afoot. And I'm actually curious what it's doing to sales of alcohol writ large just about people who are drinking mocktails now and trying to drink other kinds of beverages.

23:57Yeah, there's been, I mean, sales are down for alcohol across the entire category. one of the things affecting it is people not drinking. Are they smoking pot or are they just helping? Well, some of them are smoking pot. Some of them are on GLP-1s and they're not drinking or eating. Some of them are just cutting back because of cost. But there was a Gallup poll that only 54 % of Americans now drink alcohol, which is the lowest it's been in something like 80 years. 54%. 54%. It's probably the lowest since Prohibition. Yes, exactly. What's going on in terms of, you said it's across the board, but is it hitting wine more than beer?