President Trump appeared to suggest on Friday that a deal to separate TikTok from its Chinese owner, ByteDance, had been approved by China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.
In a post on Truth Social after a call with Mr. Xi, Mr. Trump wrote, “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval.” He did not elaborate on what the approval entailed.
A readout of the call from a Chinese state-run news agency was similarly vague. It reported that Mr. Xi said the Chinese government “respects the wishes of companies and welcomes them to conduct commercial negotiations based on market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance interests.”
TikTok’s future has been in limbo in the United States since January, when a federal law took effect requiring the company to find a non-Chinese owner or face a ban in the United States. The law was intended to address national security concerns that the app’s ownership could give Beijing a channel to spread propaganda or to collect sensitive data about Americans. Mr. Trump has extended the deadline four times.
ByteDance has for months been in talks to spin out the app’s American operations into a new company, and to bring on new U.S. investors, like the software giant Oracle, to dilute its Chinese ownership to satisfy the law’s requirements. The list of other potential investors has been in flux, two people familiar with the talks said.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump added a detail: The United States would be receiving a “tremendous fee” for putting the deal together. If that occurs, it would be the latest example of the government’s incursion into corporate deal making. In recent months, the Trump administration has negotiated and obtained a 10 percent stake in Intel, and a “golden share” in U.S. Steel as part of its sale to Nippon Steel.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent first announced that the United States had a “framework” for a deal to keep TikTok operational in the United States at a news conference in Madrid on Monday.
Chinese officials had previously vowed to oppose a forced sale of TikTok, and in 2020 it amended its export control list to include technology like algorithms and source codes.
China decided to reach an agreement with the United States on TikTok because “this consensus serves the interests of both sides,” Li Chenggang, China’s vice minister of commerce, said in Madrid on Monday after meeting with American officials, according to a readout published in Chinese state media.
On Tuesday, one day before a deadline for TikTok to separate from ByteDance, Mr. Trump issued an extension — the fourth this year — to mid-December. With the president’s suggestion on Friday of a deal approval, the extension could prove to be the final one.
Ana Swanson contributed reporting.
Emmett Lindner is a business reporter for The Times.
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