President Trump said he and China’s Xi Jinping held a “very productive call” on Friday, discussing the final approval for a deal that would see US TikTok sold.
Once confirmed, the deal should stop TikTok being banned in the US after lawmakers decided it posed a security risk to citizens’ data.
Congress had ordered the app shut down for American users by January 2025 if its Chinese owner ByteDance didn’t sell its assets in the country – but the ban has been delayed four times by President Trump.
“We made progress on many very important issues including Trade, Fentanyl, the need to bring the War between Russia and Ukraine to an end, and the approval of the TikTok Deal,” said President Trump in a Truth Social post after the call.
US President Donald Trump, during a press conference with Keir Starmer at Chequers on Thursday. Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump later told reporters at the White House that Xi had approved the deal but said it still needed to be signed.
He said: “We were able to work out a deal with China and it’s a very good deal for us.”
Asked if the US government was going to take a board seat at the company, Mr Trump responded: “We’re going to announce it. It’s a great deal for our country, it’s a great deal for all of the young people in the country that wanted it.”
He continued: “I wasn’t a fan of TikTok and then I got to use it and then I became a fan and it helped me win an election in a landslide.”
In a readout on state media, President Xi said the call was “pragmatics” and said the two leaders “had a candid and in-depth exchange of views on current China-U.S. relations”.
The readout added that China’s “position on the TikTok issue is clear: the Chinese government respects the will of companies and is pleased to see companies conduct business negotiations on the basis of market rules and reach solutions that comply with Chinese laws and regulations and balance interests”.
ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, posted after the call, thanking the two leaders for “their efforts to preserve TikTok in the United States”.
“ByteDance will work in accordance with applicable laws to ensure TikTok remains available to American users through TikTok U.S”, said the statement.
TikTok is reportedly building a separate app for US users, although it was confirmed this week it would use the original ByteDance algorithm that made TikTok so valuable in the first place.
Software firm Oracle, along with US tech investors Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz, is expected to own an 80% share of US TikTok while China maintains a 20% share, according to the Wall Street Journal..
US user data is expected to be processed by Oracle in Texas.
Beijing was long opposed to the sale, but earlier this week described the arrangement as win-win for the US and China.
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Friday’s call between the US and Chinese leaders was only the second since President Trump launched steep tariffs on China, triggering a trade war between the two nations.
After the call, President Trump said on Truth Social that he and President Xi agreed “we would meet at the APEC Summit in South Korea” next month, and he will travel to China early next year.
Chinese state media said in the readout after the call that the US hopes to promote bilateral economic and trade cooperation, will support consultations between the two teams, and properly resolve the TikTok issue.
