Tik Tok

Jeff Yass, the American billionaire, has become the largest donor in his personal name to the 2024 US presidential campaign. From his support for Donald Trump’s social network on the stock market to his lobbying in support of the TikTok platform, this stock marketer is known for his mastery of preserving his material and ideological gains.

Published on: 03/28/2024 – 22:00

7 minutes

About a year ago, a group of nongovernmental organizations in Pennsylvania issued a warning on their website Pennsylvania Capital Star News, announcing the entry of Jeff Yas into the political scene in America, considering that this represents a problem facing democracy. The group wanted to warn about the way Yas uses his enormous wealth, which ranges… Between 27 and 40 billion dollarsAs a tool to influence political trends that serve his interests.

A year later, the first part of this prediction came true, as Jeff Yass’s name began to circulate widely in the media, often in connection with former President Donald Trump’s circles, and around other files as well. As for whether he poses a threat to democracy, the matter is not yet settled.

A fan of TikTok and Truth Social

Billionaire Yas contributed to an unexpected change in Donald Trump’s situation, as the former president’s wealth may have increased by about five billion dollars since his social platform, Truth Social, entered the stock market on Tuesday, March 26.

Jeff Yass was the most important investor in the founding of Digital World Acquisition Corp, the financial vehicle that, through its fusion with Truth Social, made it possible for the social network to be listed on the stock exchange.

Truth Social’s investment fund, Susquehanna International Group (SIG), held about $22 million in shares in Digital World Acquisition Corp in December 2023.

This allowed the value of this company (SIG) to increase before its merger with Truth Social. However, SIG denied that the investment had a political significance, and stressed that it was only seeking “to achieve profits in the market.” But for Donald Trump, who has been complaining in recent weeks about the difficulty of obtaining money to pay his fines in two legal cases, Truth Social’s success in the stock market represents a major financial breakthrough. The former US president owns about 60% of the social media network Truth Social, which is worth more than $8 billion.

It appears that Jeff Yass is also linked to another “made in Donald Trump” surprise. On March 11, the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential elections opposed a law aimed at banning “Tik Tok” in the United States, although he tried unsuccessfully to get rid of the Chinese platform in 2020 during his term.

This turn has puzzled political analysts. Did Donald Trump, through his opposition to the TikTok ban, want to… Take revenge on Mark ZuckerbergThe founder of Facebook, who is suspected of being hostile to the former US president…?

But another indication of the billionaire’s connection to this transformation quickly surfaced: a few weeks before his sudden change of heart, Donald Trump met with Jeff Yass during a meeting organized by the Club for Growth, one of the most influential American conservative organizations in the country.

It is noteworthy that Susquehanna International Group (SIG) is one of the most important American investors in ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the TikTok platform.

Indeed, Jeff Yass was the first American, since 2012, to bet on the Chinese group, through his investment fund (SIG). The TikTok platform did not exist at that time. Today, the investment fund (SIG) owns 15% of ByteDance, and 7% of ByteDance shares belong to Jeff Yass personally.

and preference The Wall Street Journal The Tik Tok platform, which is used by about… 150 million people in the United StatesJeff Yass will likely incur a loss numbering in the billions.

From horse racing to stock racing… “Yas Threat”

Despite Donald Trump’s denial that he touched on the TikTok file during his meeting with Jeff Yass. But the Pennsylvania billionaire does not hesitate to put his money at the service of politicians who openly oppose the ban on TikTok, says the Wall Street Journal.

Yas’s movement at the American national level reminds us He became the largest donor in the 2024 presidential election According to Reuters statistics, what he had done in Pennsylvania.

In this state, which is located in the northeastern United States, he was accused of using his wealth to prevent the election of politicians who supported increasing local taxes. The NGO group condemning what it calls “Yass’s threat” lamented on the website of the Pennsylvania Capital Star newspaper, saying, “For years in Pennsylvania, we have watched Jeff Yass show as he exploits very lax laws on political finance to support his political favourites.”

Jeff Yass (68 years old) built his fortune in Pennsylvania, the state from which Joe Biden also hails. Yas was initially interested in horses in the 1980s, when he and his friends developed algorithms that helped win bets. They succeeded in winning more than $700,000 in one go, which is “the largest gain in the history of horse racing in the United States,” according to what she confirmed. The investigative newspaper ProPublica In an investigation into Jeff Yass published on her website in June 2022.

Yas, who is passionate about mathematics, also used the same method to establish SIG, his investment fund specializing in stock market bets, which is based on the powerful dynamics of algorithms. The billionaire was one of the first to use this method, and became one of the few who made money when the stock market crashed in 1987. Since then, his wealth has continued to grow.

Money in the service of the extreme right and a supporter of Netanyahu

Jeff Yass not only uses his money to support politicians who enable him to protect his material interests, but he also uses it as an ideological weapon. He describes himself as a “libertarian” – a concept that refers to the state playing a very small role in the economy – but his campaign donations go mainly to politicians on the far right, such as Donald Trump.

Yas is the main financier of the “Club for Growth,” which supported 42 Republican candidates who questioned the results of the 2020 presidential elections or publicly supported the attack on the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, according to what she confirmed. British newspaper The Guardian.

For your information, Jeff Yass was not one of the first to align himself with the “Trump supporters” camp and never officially announced his support for the Republican candidate. Before he sought to adjust Donald Trump’s watch to the TikTok time, he helped fund many of his rivals during the 2024 Republican Party primaries, amounting to $47 million, according to American NBC channel.

This billionaire is not only interested in American politics. He is of the Jewish faith, and also put his wealth in the service of the hard-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Specifically, he is one of the main funders of the Kohelet Policy Forum, an ultra-conservative Israeli think tank, as France 24 reported in February 2023.

If the image of Jeff Yass a few years ago was that of a kingmaker in Pennsylvania, it seems that he has decided to expand his horizons.

Text in French: Sébastien Saibet / Quote: Fares Bouchieh

2024-03-28 21:00:31
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