The Trump administration has indicated it may have finally reached an agreement with China to keep TikTok running in the United States, with the two countries finalizing it on Thursday.
President Donald Trump is visiting South Korea, where he will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in an attempt to calm the trade war.
Treasury Secretary Scott Besent told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the two leaders “will complete that deal on Thursday in Korea.”
If that happens, the deal would mark the end of months of uncertainty over the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After a broad bipartisan majority in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the US if a new owner couldn’t be found instead of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January deadline. For several hours, I did just that. But on his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to continue operating the company while his administration tries to reach an agreement to sell the company.
Three more executive orders followed as Trump, without a clear legal basis, continued to extend the deadline for the TikTok deal. The second was in April, when White House officials thought they were close to reaching an agreement to spin off TikTok into a new US-owned company that collapsed after China withdrew following Trump’s tariff announcement. The third came in June, then another in September, which Trump said would allow TikTok to continue operating in the United States in a way that meets national security concerns.
Trump’s order was intended to enable a US-led group of investors to buy the app from Chinese company ByteDance, although the deal also requires Chinese approval.
Read more: TikTok’s algorithm will be licensed to a US joint venture led by tech giant Oracle and investment firm Silver Lake
However, the TikTok deal “is not really a big deal for Xi Jinping,” Bonnie Glaser, executive director of the German Marshall Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program, said during a press conference on Tuesday. “(China) is happy to let (Trump) announce that they have finally kept the agreement. Whether or not this agreement will protect Americans’ data is a big question going forward.”
“The big question mark for the United States, of course, is whether this is consistent with American law given that there is a law passed by Congress,” Glaser said.
About 43% of U.S. adults under 30 say they regularly get news from TikTok, a higher percentage than any other social media app, including YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, according to a Pew Research Center report published in September.
Americans are also more divided about what to do about TikTok than they were two years ago.
A recent Pew Research Center poll found that about a third of Americans said they support a TikTok ban, down from 50% in March 2023. Nearly a third said they would oppose a ban, and a similar percentage said they were unsure.
Among those who said they supported banning the social media platform, about 8 in 10 cited concerns about the security of users’ data being compromised as a key factor in their decision, according to the report.
TikTok’s recommendations algorithm — which directed millions of users to an endless stream of short videos — has been central to the security controversy around the platform. China has previously stated that the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But the US regulation approved by Congress with bipartisan support said that any divestment in TikTok must mean that the platform cuts its ties with ByteDance.
US officials have warned that the algorithm — a complex system of rules and calculations that platforms use to deliver personalized content to your feed — is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, but US officials have provided no evidence that China has tried to do so.
Associated Press writer Fu Ting contributed to this story from Washington.
