President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the United States and China have an agreement that would maintain the application of Short Videos Tiktok operating in the United States, transferring their US assets to US owners from Bytedance of China, which would potentially solve a saga that has prolonged for almost a year.
An agreement on the popular application of social networks, which has 170 million users in the United States, is a great advance in the conversations that have prolonged for months between the first and second economy of the world, which have sought to deactivate a wide commercial war that has baffled global markets.
“We have an agreement on Tiktok … We have a very large group of companies that want to buy it,” Trump said Tuesday, without giving details about the agreement.
Any agreement may require the approval of the Congress controlled by the Republicans, which approved a law in 2024 during the Biden administration that required divestment due to the fears that the Chinese government could access the data of American users of Tiktok, which would allow Beijing to spy on Americans or perform influence operations through the application.
The Trump administration has repeatedly refused to apply a law that requires the closure of the application due to fears that it would be angry at the millions of users of the application and interrupt political communications, and instead extended the deadline for divestment on three different occasions.
Trump has attributed his success in re -election to the application last year, and his personal account has 15 million followers. The White House launched an official Tiktok account last month.
Follow business information and today in Forbes Mexico
CNBC reported on Tuesday that the agreement is expected to be closed in the next 30 to 45 days, and that it will include the current Bytedance investors, the China Tiktok parent company based in China, and new investors. Reuters has not verified this information independently.
The details of the CNBC report agreement coincide with what is reported by Reuters in April.
An agreement had been brewing from spring. This would have split American Tiktok operations in a new company based in the United States, majority and operated by US investors, but was suspended after China indicated that it would not approve it after Trump’s announcement to impose strong tariffs on Chinese products.
Washington has argued that Tiktok’s property by Bytedonce makes it a company in debt to the Chinese government and that Beijing could use the application to collect data on Americans.
The company has said that US officials have misrepresented their links with China, arguing that their content recommendation engine and user data are stored in the United States in cloud servers operated by Oracle, while content moderation decisions that affect US users are also taken in the United States.
Officials from both countries reached a framework agreement on Monday, which marks a great advance after months of intense negotiations. The White House has had an unprecedented participation in the agreement negotiations, which have been very often.
In the midst of commercial tensions escalation, the United States and China delegations discussed divestment as part of broader disputes over tariffs and control regulations for technology exports.
Do you like to inform yourself for Google News? Follow our showcase to have the best stories
