TikTok’s fate in the United States remained unresolved after a meeting between President Trump and Xi Jinping, China’s leader, on Thursday, following weeks of statements from the administration that it was in the final stages of a deal to separate the company from its Chinese owner.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Sunday that he and Chinese negotiators had agreed during talks in Malaysia to a deal that would allow TikTok to can keep operating in the United States. Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi, he said, could “consummate that transaction” when they met in South Korea.
But after the meeting, China’s Ministry of Commerce mentioned the social media platform only in passing, stating that two countries planned “to properly resolve issues” related to TikTok and its Chinese owner, ByteDance, without elaborating further. Mr. Trump did not mention the company at all in his own remarks.
Mr. Bessent referenced the talks in Malaysia again in a Thursday television interview but extended the time frame for concluding a deal to perhaps “months” from now.
“In Kuala Lumpur, we finalized the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval, and I would expect that would go forward in the coming weeks and months, and we’ll finally see a resolution to that,” he said.
So far, the administration has announced few details about who would own the U.S. version of the app or when the deal might be finalized. An executive order issued in September gave negotiators until mid-January to finalize the deal.
Beijing’s assent is seen as necessary to close the deal. A law passed by Congress last year said that the app must be banned unless it was sold by ByteDance after years of concern that the app posed a national security problem. Many lawmakers, as well as the Biden administration and the first Trump administration, argued that the Chinese government could use the app as spyware or a propaganda tool.
The law took effect in January after it was upheld by the Supreme Court. Since then, Mr. Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for a deal to be reached. He has told his administration not to enforce the law as the negotiations go forward, pushing the boundaries of executive power.
David McCabe is a Times reporter who covers the complex legal and policy issues created by the digital economy and new technologies.
The post Little Word of a TikTok Deal Out of Trump-Xi Meeting appeared first on New York Times.
