Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s victory lap on a TikTok deal has blown up in his face.
President Donald Trump left his meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping without any mention of an agreement regarding the app’s future, despite Bessent asserting on Sunday that “we reached a deal on TikTok.”
David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times, noted that the meeting with Jinping—spun as a success by the White House because it reached a trade deal to fix part of its self-inflicted tariff crisis—left many key issues unresolved.
“The remarkable thing about this was what wasn’t in their announcements,” he said of the Trump administration on CNN, adding, “There’s the TikTok issue. There’s Taiwan. We heard about none of them.”
Bessent, 63, attempted to save face before he and Trump boarded their flight home from South Korea on Thursday. He reiterated in a Fox Business appearance that U.S. officials had “finalized the TikTok agreement in terms of getting Chinese approval.”
However, Bessent conceded that the finalization of a TikTok agreement was delayed yet again, saying it would instead be completed “in the coming weeks and months.”
That is a change of tune from Sunday when he said to CBS News that Trump and Jinping’s meeting would “consummate” a deal that had already been agreed upon.
China’s commerce ministry issued a vague statement regarding the social media site, writing on Thursday that it “will work with the U.S. to properly resolve issues related to TikTok.”
The ministry added, “The U.S. side made positive commitments in areas such as investment.”
Trump, 79, hailed the meeting in South Korea as “truly great,” but made no mention of TikTok himself on Air Force One.
Former President Joe Biden signed a law last year that makes it illegal for TikTok to operate in the United States unless its China-based owner, ByteDance, divests its U.S. assets. The law passed Congress with bipartisan support, with lawmakers saying national security concerns made the ban necessary.
That ban, while threatened, has been repeatedly delayed. Aside from a brief period on Jan. 19, the eve of Trump’s inauguration, American users of the video-sharing app have been able to continue posting, scrolling, and growing their followings without change.
The post MAGA Secretary’s TikTok Victory Lap Blows Up in His Face appeared first on The Daily Beast.
