Chapter 1: What are the latest developments regarding TikTok in the U.S.?
Natural 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.
Chapter 2: How are natural gas prices affected by the Arctic blast?
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. A 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.
Chapter 3: What does the TikTok deal mean for American users?
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 and extreme cold wave to follow the storm, which is going to amplify impacts.
Utilities 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.
Chapter 4: What are the implications of TikTok's ownership shift to American investors?
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.
Chapter 5: Why was TikTok considered a national security threat?
It fuels about 47% 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, Delcy 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 Kajal Vias says that analysts feel the new bill falls short of what's needed to unlock such investments.
Chapter 6: How has the U.S.-China relationship influenced the TikTok deal?
It 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.
Chapter 7: What is the significance of the ‘No Buy January’ trend on social media?
And 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.
Chapter 8: How are consumers responding to economic pressures in January?
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. TikTok 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 rollercoaster 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. How 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 Silverlake, 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. So 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. OK, 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 friendly toward China or might show some sort of discord in America. So 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.
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