The United States and China are ready to move forward on a TikTok deal, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Bessent had already said last month that the two countries had reached a “framework” for a deal during talks in Madrid, and President Donald Trump subsequently signed an executive order to facilitate the transaction.
During a Sunday morning appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, Bessent said the United States and China had reached “a final agreement on TikTok.”
“We have reached this in Madrid and I think that from today all the details are settled and it will be up to the two leaders to conclude this transaction on Thursday in Korea,” Bessent said. He declined to discuss the details of the deal, but added: “My mission was to get the Chinese to agree to approve the transaction, and I think we’ve done that successfully over the last couple of days.” »
Trump has repeatedly extended the deadline for a law that requires TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the app or risk seeing it banned in the United States.
Under his executive order, TikTok’s U.S. operations — including its recommendation algorithm, source code and content moderation — will be under the control of a new board of directors, with Oracle becoming responsible for security operations.
Oracle (led by Trump ally Larry Ellison), Fox Corp (owner of Fox News), Andreessen Horowitz and Silver Lake Management were reported as investors in the new joint venture, with Fox’s stake seemingly confirmed by Trump.
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Bessent made the comments today from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where Chinese and U.S. trade negotiators also said they had reached a framework for agreement on tariffs and other trade issues.
U.S. trade negotiator Jamieson Greer told reporters that rare earth minerals came up in the discussion, although he did not specify how. (China has announced it will tighten export controls on these minerals, which are essential for making semiconductors and other technology products.)
“We talked about extending the truce, we talked about rare earths, of course, we talked about all kinds of topics,” Greer said.
