United States President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order this week approving a deal to divest TikTok’s US operations[1] from its China-based parent company, ByteDance, in compliance with a 2024 law.
The White House announced the agreement on Monday. A senior official said the US believes China has approved the deal and no further talks with Beijing are planned although additional paperwork is still required from both sides.
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Trump has sought to prevent TikTok, which has about 170 million American users, from being banned under a law passed by Congress that required ByteDance to sell its US assets by January this year.
Enforcement of that deadline has been delayed until mid-December while the Trump administration works to separate TikTok’s US operations, bring in American investors and ensure the transaction meets the divestiture requirements. The White House has already postponed the deadline four times – in February, April, June and last week.
A White House official said the deal is valued in the “many billions of dollars”.
Regulatory hurdles remain, including potential antitrust scrutiny, the White House said. While the full list of investors is not yet finalised, according to the White House, US citizens would hold six of the seven seats on the board overseeing the popular short-form video app’s US operations. ByteDance would retain less than 20 percent ownership while TikTok in the US would be controlled by a mix of existing US and global firms along with new investors unaffiliated with ByteDance.
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Among those already named are the venture capital firm Silver Lake, Oracle and Andreessen Horowitz.
Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison is a close Trump ally, and Marc Andreessen has previously acknowledged spending significant time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida since the 2024 election, which Trump won.
Trump also noted over the weekend that the Murdoch family, owners of Fox News, are investors in the deal. The White House said the investor base must be “patriotic” although it is unclear how that standard is being defined.
“Donald Trump said just days ago that he thinks criticism of him should be illegal. Now he’s steering control of one of the country’s most popular social media platforms to his billionaire political allies. It would be naive to think they won’t censor Trump’s critics while boosting content that pleases him,” Seth Stern, director of advocacy at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, told Al Jazeera.
The White House rebuked assertions that TikTok’s new investors will push political messaging one way or the other.
“This utterly delusional conspiracy theory has absolutely no basis in reality and should not be taken seriously by anyone. Instead of trying to foment baseless paranoia, ‘media analysts’ and fake news reporters should spend their time covering how President Trump has crafted a deal to save TikTok without undermining our national and economic security,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told Al Jazeera.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday that “TikTok users in the US will be able to see videos posted by users in other countries and vice versa.”
US user data will be hosted on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure. The Wall Street Journal added that under the new structure, engineers at the reconstituted company will have the ability to adjust the app’s algorithm.
The algorithm will be “trained, retrained and operated in the United States outside of ByteDance control”, Leavitt said.
Oracle would receive a copy of the algorithm, according to The Associated Press news agency, which quoted Trump administration officials who requested anonymity. This, they said, would help “prevent potential manipulation of addictive content”.
Regardless of the political implications, Oracle investors are responding positively to the news of the looming deal. As of 2:30pm in New York (18:30 GMT), the stock was up more than 5 percent.
The White House projected that the deal would help TikTok generate up to $178bn in economic activity over the next four years.
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The negotiations come amid broader scrutiny of US media enterprises. The ABC TV network recently suspended comedian Jimmy Kimmel indefinitely from his late night show after he made remarks about the Trump administration’s reaction[2] to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s shooting death. The suspension followed a backlash from Nexstar Media Group, which operates many local TV stations, including ABC affiliates, and currently has a merger under review by the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. Nexstar said its stations would stop carrying the show Jimmy Kimmel Live!
The looming TikTok deal also comes during trade talks between Washington and Beijing.
“For the US, continuing TikTok operations is in alignment with political interests [for example, keeping young TikTok users engaged] despite the national security concerns that triggered the initial desire to ban the platform,” Maria Pechurina, director of international trade at Peacock Tariff Consulting, told Al Jazeera.
“By making concessions on the deal, China hopes for broader reciprocal US concessions, such as tariff rate reductions, easing investment restrictions and progress on the semiconductor export controls conversation,” she added.
Over the weekend, members of the US House of Representatives[3] met with Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing in an effort to “break the ice” during the trade talks, which made rare headway last week.
Trump spoke to Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday for the first time in three months after the announcement of the possible TikTok divestment.
Representatives for Oracle did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.
References
- ^ TikTok’s US operations (www.aljazeera.com)
- ^ Trump administration’s reaction (www.aljazeera.com)
- ^ US House of Representatives (www.aljazeera.com)