US Trade Representative, Jamieson Greer, has confirmed that US and China have struck a framework agreement on transferring TikTok to US-controlled ownership.
Speaking after emerging from negotiations with Chinese officials, US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent said that the deal was coming but declined to reveal the commercial terms. He told reporters after coming out of high-level talks in Madrid, “We have a framework for a TikTok deal.”
“We’re not going to talk about the commercial terms of the deal. It’s between two private parties, but the commercial terms have been agreed upon.”
Scott Bessent
China’s Vice Commerce Minister, Li Chenggang also told reporters in Madrid that a framework of consensus had been reached on TikTok, while cautioning that Beijing won’t sacrifice principles for a deal. He added that China takes issue with the politicization of trade and economic issues.
The framework agreement is a breakthrough in the long-running dispute over TikTok’s ownership, which has raised national security concerns in Washington over the app’s Chinese parent company ByteDance.
In April 2024, Joe Biden signed legislation that gave ByteDance nine months to sell the platform to a US-approved buyer or face a total ban – a deadline that Donald Trump has repeatedly extended.
Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for shutting down TikTok, even though the law allows for just one 90-day reprieve, and only if there’s a deal on the table and a formal notification to Congress. The current extension expires on September 17, 2025. Although Trump hasn’t addressed the forthcoming deadline directly, he has claimed that he can delay the ban indefinitely.
The meeting in Madrid is the fourth round of trade talks between United States and Chinese officials since Trump launched a tariff war on Chinese goods in April.
TikTok is one of more than 100 apps developed in the past decade by ByteDance, a technology firm founded in 2012 by Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Yiming and headquartered in Beijing’s northwestern Haidian district
The TikTok ownership saga stretches back to 2020, when Trump first ordered ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a shutdown.
Microsoft initially pursued a potential acquisition worth billions of dollars, with CEO Satya Nadella engaging directly with Trump, but it fell apart in what Nadella dubbed at the time “the strangest deal” he’s ever worked on.
Soon after, Walmart and Oracle came close to buying TikTok’s US arm, proposing a joint acquisition of a new entity called TikTok Global, but it was shelved indefinitely after the Biden administration conducted its own review of Chinese tech companies.
Oracle has remained TikTok’s US cloud provider since 2022 in a deal aimed at addressing security concerns.
Trump, Xi Scheduled To Discuss Final Details Of Framework Deal
Bessent said that final details would be settled when Trump speaks with Xi Jinping, China’s President, on Friday.
Greer confirmed that the agreement was now awaiting approval from both leaders. “We’re not going to be in the business of having repetitive extensions,” he said, adding, “We have a deal.”
Trump also confirmed in a post on social media that he will be speaking to Xi on Friday, adding, “The relationship remains a very strong one!!!”
TikTok gained more traction during the shutdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, when short dances that went viral became a mainstay of the app.
Challenges came in tandem with TikTok’s success. US officials expressed concerns about the company’s roots and ownership, pointing to laws in China that require Chinese companies to hand over data requested by the government. Another concern became the proprietary algorithm that populates what users see on the app.
The US is estimated to have over 135 million active users on the platform, including the White House, which launched its own official account in August, despite the fact that government devices themselves are still prohibited from using the app under federal law.
