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It's not a ban, it's a forced divestment from Chinese ownership. The real question is why Bytedance isn't willing to take fair market value for Tiktok instead of just losing everything, since that makes no sense if this was just "business" and there weren't ulterior motives involved.

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If I owned a business in another country and that other country coerced me to sell against my wishes, I'd be very skeptical about receiving the proceeds from the sale.

So TikTok sells to a domestic company, domestic company wants to wire over $40bn to ByteDance but before the transfer goes through the Treasury Department decides a $40bn payment shouldn't be sent to a "foreign adversary". It's my understanding that the Treasury has a lot of leeway in this.

No company retains ownership if the purchase doesn't go through. They could also simply require payment up front as part of the sale terms before transfer of the platform. They've had nearlt a year to arrange all of this.

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