Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday outlining the terms of a deal to transfer TikTok to a US owner.
Trump said he and China’s president Xi Jinping had come to an agreement to allow TikTok to continue operating in the US, separating the social media platform from its Chinese owner ByteDance. Trump said the deal complies with a law that would have forced the shutdown of the app for American users had it not been divested and sold to a US owner.
Under the plan, US investors will take over the majority of TikTok’s operations and take charge of a licensed copy of the app’s powerful recommendation algorithm. American companies are expected to own about 80% of the US version of the spun off company, while ByteDance and Chinese investors will own less than 20%. The new version of TikTok will be controlled by a seven-member board of directors made up of cybersecurity and national security experts, six of them Americans, according to the White House.
The group of American TikTok investors is led by the US software giant Oracle, which will oversee TikTok’s US operations, provide cloud service for user data storage and get a license to take control of the app’s algorithm. White House officials have said ByteDance and Chinese officials will not have access to US user data.
Along with Oracle and its cofounder Larry Ellison, other investors include the private equity firm Silver Lake, media mogul Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, and the CEO of Dell computers Michael Dell.
Trump said he spoke with Xi over the phone on Friday. “The call was a very good one, we will be speaking again by phone, appreciate the TikTok approval, and both look forward to meeting at APEC!” the president wrote on his social network, Truth Social.
The tentative deal ends months of legal limbo for one of the US’s most widely used apps, while also giving several US companies a powerful newfound influence within the social media industry. TikTok is used by about 180 million people nationwide, and Trump has credited it with helping him win the 2024 presidential election. The deal is also another foray for the Trump administration to exert influence over the tech industry, after it took a 10% stake in chipmaker Intel earlier this month and has urged companies like Apple and Nvidia to invest hundreds of billions domestically. For the elaborate TikTok negotiations with China, the US government is expected to collect a multibillion-dollar fee from the consortium of investors, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“The United States is getting a tremendous fee-plus—I call it a fee-plus—for just making the deal,” Trump said of the unprecedented transaction, while speaking at a press conference in England last week. “And I don’t want to throw that out the window.”
TikTok once faced bipartisan pushback from lawmakers over concerns about data privacy, and allegations China could use the app to spread propaganda or undermine US democracy. TikTok repeatedly denied those claims, but Congress overwhelmingly voted last year to compel ByteDance to find a US buyer or face a ban in the country.
The supreme court unanimously upheld the ban in January. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order postponing the ban and has since repeatedly delayed its enforcement.
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Last week, Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, announced that the US and China had reached a framework for a deal on TikTok following a series of high-level talks in Madrid. China’s top trade negotiator Li Chengang confirmed the agreement later that day, as well as issued a warning against the US attempting “suppression” against Chinese companies.
Although Trump had also alluded to the deal last week, he declined to provide any details.
“A deal was also reached on a ‘certain’ company that young people in our Country very much want to save. They will be very happy!” he posted on Truth Social.
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