TikTok USA Is Here to Stay

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0:18Natural gas prices soar as the U.S. braces for an Arctic blast. Plus, TikTok USA is here to stay. If you're a user of TikTok, you're not going to see a difference. It's going to be interoperable with the rest of the world, but it won't be banned. And we'll go behind the no-buy January trend that's sweeping social media. It's Friday, January 23rd. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

0:52A winter storm bearing heavy snow, strong winds and bitter cold is descending upon the central U.S. from the Dakotas to the Gulf, with its sights set on the east coast in the coming days. AccuWeather chief meteorologist Jonathan Porter warned drivers to take caution as ice accumulates on roads and said the storm was likely to affect a broad swath of the country from Texas to the Carolinas. There are many communities that are not typically used to dealing with this magnitude of snow and ice that are going to be having to contend with that. Plus, we're going to be dealing with a freeze-up, an extreme cold wave to follow the storm, which is going to amplify impacts.

1:30Utilities are bracing for the worst, wary of a repeat of a deadly 2021 winter storm in Texas that left millions without power for days. And energy producers in some of America's largest oil and gas fields could see disruptions too, with traders anticipating that a large share of U.S. production could become blocked in frozen wells precisely when heating demand is at its peak. Energy reporter Julia Petroni said that comes as natural gas prices are already high. U.S. natural gas prices have jumped this week to their highest level since 2022. Natural gas is the dominant heating fuel across the U.S.

2:09It fuels about 47 percent of heating demand and it also supplies a large share of electricity generation. In fact, the energy department told grid operators to be ready to take extraordinary steps, including tapping back a power generation if needed. The acting president of Venezuela, Delce Rodriguez, has unveiled a new bill aimed at loosening the state's iron grip on its oil industry, a move aimed at repairing relations with Washington and attracting investment from U.S. energy companies. President Trump has pressed American producers to quickly pour $100 billion into Venezuela. But journal reporter Cajal Villas says that analysts feel the new bill falls short of what's needed to unlock such investments.

2:52It will lower the mandatory 60 % state participation in joint oil projects down to around 50%. It also lowers royalty rates from around 30 % down to as low as 15%. And it also calls for investors to have the capability of arbitration, which is very important, especially in Venezuela, where many companies have been burned in the past, having had their projects nationalized and having limited recourse in how to try to recoup their investments. Analysts are still quite skeptical over how successful it's going to be, namely because the government has a long track record of breaking contracts and really testy relationships with foreign investors.

3:38And so there is understandably quite a bit of doubts over how serious they are this time around. Meanwhile, a resolution to rein in President Trump's powers to wage war in Venezuela was narrowly defeated in the House yesterday after a tied vote of 215 to 215. That's after Republican leaders hustled to bring a Texas lawmaker back to D.C. to cast the deciding vote. The resolution would have prohibited U.S. troops from being deployed in Venezuela without authorization by Congress. The Senate had previously advanced and then rejected a similar measure after threats from Trump. Good news for roughly two in three Americans.

4:18TikTok officially isn't going anywhere. The company has formally inked a joint venture allowing it to keep operating in the U.S., ending a years-long fight over whether to ban the video-sharing app on national security grounds. And joining me to break down this deal, shifting operations of TikTok to American investors, and to recap the roller coaster ride that got us here is the journal's Stu Wu. Stu, walk us through the details of this deal. Who's getting what exactly? Okay, so number one, TikTok is not getting banned in the US. After all we've been through over the past couple of years with Congress banning them and the Supreme Court holding up that ban, TikTok is here to stay.

4:55How this is happening is that TikTok's parent company, which is based in China, ByteDance, is agreeing to sell an 80 % stake to investors that the U.S. deems friendly. So that includes the U.S. tech giant Oracle. It includes the family office of Michael Dell and includes Silver Lake, the big investment firm. So what that means is that while the Chinese parent company will still retain a big stake, the rest of the company will be overseen by U.S. investors. And the key investor here is Oracle, the big U.S. tech company. They're going to be overseeing how TikTok is run in America. So they're going to be housing the data for TikTok and also see how the algorithms work.

5:30So the system that figures out what videos the average user sees. And this, Stu, is important given some of the concerns that had existed around the sort of black box of how TikTok works. Right, okay, so let's step back a second. Why was TikTok considered a security threat? Well, it's owned by a Chinese parent company, ByteDance. And the concern was that ByteDance could do two things. It could, number one, spy on the phones of Americans. And number two, it could adjust the content on TikTok So it might show some videos that might be friendlier toward China or it might show some sort of discord in America.

6:01So the idea is that now with Oracle overseeing everything that runs on TikTok, they're going to be able to spot something that says, oh, wait a minute, that seems un-American, that seems unsafe. That's the idea, that it lets TikTok keep on operating in America, but it will be controlled by Americans, not a company in China. All right, let's see if security hawks, members of Congress feel that that 20 percent bite dance steak is something they can live with going forward. I noted that President Trump thanked Chinese leader Xi Jinping for making this deal happen. We report this whole arrangement had been approved by both the U.S.

6:35and Chinese governments. Situate this within the broader U.S.-China relationship, if you could. So over the last couple of months, the U.S. and China have been getting friendlier amid what a lot of people call this U.S.-China tech cold war. So this TikTok deal has happened. And before that, Trump said, OK, NVIDIA, you make the world's best AI chips, but we're going to let you sell some relatively new chips to China, even though China and the U.S. are fighting for AI supremacy that could decide modern warfare, for example. There's this sort of mindset in Washington among the national security hawks that trade and national security issues are different.

7:09They say when it comes to national security, we don't want to give anything that might give China an edge and trade deals should be different. President Trump, on the other hand, thinks that everything is on the table. So let's throw in national security issues. Let's put that away if we can get a better deal on trade or something else like that. And that's upset a lot of people who are really focused on national security. And Stu, in terms of what persuaded Beijing to do this, ByteDance had initially been really adamant it was not going to sell U.S. TikTok. And Beijing, for a while, had backed that up.

7:40That's right. So my colleagues have reported on this. And what they say is that, you know, Beijing doesn't really view TikTok as a huge issue. They're really concerned about things like AI and things that could be more tightly connected to the military. They're not concerned about an app where people do silly dances. So this was maybe for them just a bargaining chip that they were able to get something out of it. And also, you know, let one of its biggest tech companies continue doing what it does in America. In America, where the app has a big fan in President Trump. Just yesterday, he was touting his popularity on TikTok.

8:12Yeah, exactly. So about a year and a half ago during the presidential race between Biden and Trump, Biden had the stance that this is a national security threat. I'm going to listen to my advisors and we're going to ban TikTok. What happened was that some people close to President Trump showed him, hey, you're really popular on TikTok and this could be really important toward earning the votes of younger people. So eventually, along the way, President Trump said, you know what? I support TikTok. I'm not going to ban it if I get elected. And it turns out that was one of the promises that he's been able to keep.

8:40That was the Journal's Stu Wu joining me this morning from Singapore. Stu, thank you so much. Thanks, Luke. Coming up, gold is outshining everything as it hits a new all-time high. But another safe haven, Japanese bonds, lost their luster this week. We'll look at what a wild few days of politics has meant for markets after the break.

9:02Model portfolios have evolved from a one-size-fits-all solution. In a recent roundtable conversation, Jeffrey Saif of BlackRock and Alessio DeLongis of Invesco break down what's driving the next model moment, discussing how a deeper level of customization is producing a better alignment with investor goals and creating a practice differentiator for financial advisors.

9:28In markets news, gold prices are nearing$5 ,000 an ounce just three months after crossing the once unthinkable$4 ,000 mark. The metal has surged amid geopolitical uncertainty, sky-high stock prices, and as central banks pile in as fellow buyers pushing up prices. On the other hand, Japanese government bond yields are edging lower today, restoring a degree of stability after a topsy-turvy week that saw yields surge after the country's prime minister took steps to try and address cost of living concerns. Our Tokyo Bureau Chief Jason Douglas has more. So Sanio Takeichi, the prime minister, called a snap election.

10:05And one of her first policy pledges was to waive consumption tax on food for a couple of years. On the face of it, maybe not a huge deal, but it turns out this would cost something like$30 billion a year. And she didn't really explain how she was going to pay for it. The result of this was that yields of Japanese bonds spiked higher as their prices fell. Pretty big, chunky moves that spooked a lot of people. The reason this is important for global markets, and what we saw actually after the Japanese yields moved higher, was that yields on other bonds, including U.S. Treasuries, also moved higher.

10:37One of the reasons Japanese bonds are so important for global markets is that Japanese investors have a hell of a lot of money invested overseas. And if you see yields spiking higher at home, that might tend to bring some of that money home. And that has consequences then for all sorts of foreign assets, particularly bonds like U.S. Treasuries, stocks, other things.

11:02And as affordability takes center stage in U.S. politics, social media is blowing up with one particular New Year's resolution. I'm a shopaholic and I'm doing no by January. So here are my rules. I'm not buying new clothes just because something is trendy. I already have a closet full of clothes. No knickknacks, no home decor. basically no non-essentials for food, no eating out, no coffee runs. The Journal's Jennifer Williams says the month-long no-buy January challenge is particularly popular this year as consumers look to reset their lifestyle or offset heavy holiday spending. A survey conducted for NerdWallet found that more than a quarter have tried a no-spend January, and this year 12 % are joining in on the trend.

11:44Consumers are anxious. They remain anxious about affordability and sluggish hiring. And prices for everything from groceries to insurance and housing are higher than they were a few years ago. To capitalize on the minimal spend trend, Europe's largest secondhand retailer, Vinted, is pouring tens of millions of dollars into expanding in the U.S. It's Vinted's second attempt to penetrate the U.S. market, where it will face competition from other platforms, including Poshmark, Mercari and ThredUp. And that's it for What's News for this Friday morning. Today's show was produced by Daniel Bach and Hattie Moyer.

12:19Our supervising producer was Sandra Kilhoff, and I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Otherwise, have a great weekend, and thanks for listening.

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