President Trump is a man who understands leverage. The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act aka the TikTok sell or shut down bill gives to the president the decision over allowing TikTok to continue to operate in America. As a practical matter, the TikTok Act gives whoever is in the office of the President of the United States the power to allow TikTok to sell shares in an initial public offering on the US exchanges. Given that TikTok is losing challenges to the TikTok Act as fast as the company files lawsuits, TikTok’s failures in the Congress and the courts gives President Trump tremendous leverage over the TikTok IPO.

It just so happened that TikTok’s CEO was in town yesterday, and, according to The Hill, TikTok’s “CEO Shou Zi Chew met with President-elect Trump in Florida on Monday, becoming the latest tech leader to hold talks with the incoming president ahead of Inauguration Day.” I wonder what they had to talk about?

As this drama plays out, guess who else happened to be at Mar-a-lago on Monday? Why it was Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank. Masa and President Trump announced that SoftBank will be investing $100 billion in the US and Trump was holding Masa to increase the investment to $200 billion on national television. That’s quite a pile of cash, and presumably Trump felt he had the leverage to display his negotiating in public. Now what ever gave him that idea?

SoftBank started its Vision Fund a few years ago which targeted $100 billion in various investments. So Masa’s investment in America is about the same scale as the Vision Fund. What did the Vision Fund invest in? Uber and WeWork which you’re probably familiar with as well as Arm Holdings (semiconductors) and South Korea’s largest online retailer Coupang.

And there was one other notable Vision Fund investment–ByteDance which owns TikTok. And make no mistake, Masa and SoftBank will do just fine in their TikTok exit if TikTok is allowed to continue to exist in the US.

Well worth Masa’s trip to Florida with his protege Mr. Chew.

Just sayin.